They Might Be Werewolves

Amazon Prime time! Which usually means a horror movie that no one has ever heard of and never will again.

My favorites. 

Quick Plot: Rich girl Sarah and her friends are partying at her dad's secluded home on a Chumash reservation. 

Yes, they're white.

Ex-boyfriend Alex brings along a card game variation on Werewolf, the perfect campfire-and-hot-sauce-spiked-tequila activity. Also on board are Sarah's older half-siblings Jacey and Tala (thankfully not white), party girls Connie and Liz, and the band "Potheads" (no, really) who respectfully do not subject us to their music. 

A few hours later, everyone wakes up with massive hangovers and lost time. 

Also, lost people. Band member Nick's little Instagram-obsessed sister Julie is missing, most likely from their trip into town for drinks and bars (and no, I don't mean "drinks at a bar"; it's 2023, OBVIOUSLY I'm talking about cell phone reception). Is it a coincidence that she was also the first victim during the gang's game? What can we make out of the pair of glowing eyes just over her shoulder spotted in that fateful last selfie? 

It doesn't take long for a few players to disappear, though it takes a whole lot longer for those remaining to stop drinking (these kids are VERY SMART). Eventually, they piece together some messy facts: the game is real, which means Nick and Connie might be morphing into their werewolf card counterparts when no one is looking.

Written by Chloe Bellande and directed by Terry Spears, As the Village Sleeps has an interesting idea at its core, and calls to mind a few other similarly low budget parlor game-based horrors, including Dead Body and Witch-Hunt (a movie I'm still begging SOMEONE else to see that wasn't me or the director's immediate family). It's a good idea for a horror film, especially when resources are clearly strained. Spears keeps virtually all of the violence offscreen, building the entire threat through situation and dialogue alone. It's admirable.

I just wish it were also entertaining. 

My biggest problem with As the Village Sleeps is that it's centered on aggressively dull to awful people. Nobody seems to actually like each other, let alone care much when they vanish. There's a kernel of an interesting relationship between Sarah and Tala, but it ends as quickly as it's introduced. It also took me a good half hour to figure out whether Tala and Jacey were siblings or lovers. I know I've read my share of VC Andrews and am therefore always looking for both, but still.

High Points

I almost didn't realize just how little action is actually onscreen until I started to think back to the film's details. It takes a bit of a leap of faith to make a horror movie knowing you can't really show any of it, and it's a credit to the filmmakers that it the concept works

Low Points

When your apparent heroine is introduced as the kind of spoiled rich girl who calls her best friend a whore (who of course responds with "bitch!"), it's an uphill battle to ever get us on her side (or any of the fairly unpleasant characters here)

Lessons Learned

The only strangers you'll encounter on a dark road in the middle of the night will be hot chicks or old dudes

You won't find street names on a tribal reservation

Pushing a fully clothed woman into a hot tub is only acceptable if rain is in the forecast

Chekov's Bear Trap

Thank goodness this sign comes into play. As I've said time and time again, if you introduce a bear trap at any point in your film, you damn well better have it go off

Rent/Bury/Buy

As the Village Sleeps is interesting in how it manages to give a fairly creative twist to the standard slasher setup. I just wish it was also interesting to watch. I think some horror fans with an appreciation for low budget potential will get something out of this. I don't regret watching it, but I just have a hard time telling anyone else to. 

Nail Gun Massacre (but not that one)

 

You know how you never really outgrow your childhood vices? For some it's nail biting, others, party bowls of cheese puffs, and most of us horror fans, cheaply made slashers set in wooded areas. 

Yup. Who says you have to grow up?

Quick Plot: Graduating high school senior Dominic is using his father's remote cabin for a fun weekend with his crush Ilsa, Japanese exchange student Mariko, and her boyfriend Kenji. His charcuterie plans are thrown asunder when Ilsa shows up with a batch of uninvited guests: her new older bro squeeze Dwane, unrequited crush Marcus, odd pal Rumor, stoner Eli, and smoker Sara.

With the PlayStation broken and radio non-iPod ready, the group decides to kill time the old-fashioned way: a parlor game of Dead Body. Naturally (since the film's title is "Dead Body") things get quite real: Mariko, Kenji, and Dominic are quickly found slain, and with doors locking from the inside, it's clear that the murderer is one of their own.

Dead Body is directed by newcomer Bobbin Ramsey from a script by Ian Bell and Ramon Isao, and clearly, this was made for less than the catering budget of a Marvel film (or even the cast payout for a BlumHouse one). We're pretty much restricted to one house and some woods, with actors you might have seen as character witnesses on Law & Order. Most of the violence occurs under so much darkness that there clearly wasn't too much of a need to go broke on fake blood.

And yet, much like the similarly tiny and game-themed Witch-Hunt, Dead Body manages to be far more entertaining than you might fear for a title you've never heard of streaming on Amazon Prime. It's under 90 minutes and moves exactly how you'd want this kind of dead "teenager" movie to move.

Some of the early arguments about what is actually going down feel repetitive (not ideal in such a short film), but one could argue that there's something of a point to that. I haven't played Dead Body in years, but the film makes it feel like an oral version of Clue, which adds an interesting spin to a fast mass murder mystery.

The characters are idiots, and most on the mild scale of likability, but the young(ish) actors (seriously, I did a few double takes when I realized they were supposed to be 18-year-old graduates and not celebrating a 10-year reunion) are good enough to help the material along. This isn't a hidden gem or new classic, but if you're looking for an old-fashioned slasher on cheap hypderdrive, Dead Body more than satisfies.

High Points
There really is a lot to admire in terms of how Ramsey made such efficient use of what had to be a teeny budget

Low Points
I'm not fully sure what to make of the film's treatment of its two Japanese characters, who exist solely to have a lot of sex while their very white friends discuss how they're always having sex because that's what Japanese people do. It's actually less racist than I'm making it sound, but still...it just sits weird

A Note of Exemption
Time and time again, I've expressed rage at the new trend of opening a movie on a flash of violence that occurs 2/3rds of the way through the running time before flashing a "24 Hours Earlier" note to start proper. It feels cheap and sometimes genuinely spoils certain plot elements and usually, accomplishes nothing but presumably assures an impatient audience that yes, there will be violence in what might be a slow-burn. That being said, Dead Body does indeed open on such a scene, but this is the rare case where it doesn't hurt the storytelling. Instead, it just lets us know from the beginning that this is a whodunit, something the movie doesn't really hide.

Lessons Learned
You apparently don't have to be that smart to get into Harvard

Never underestimate the user-friendly quickfire power of a nail gun (as if we didn't already know)

It never hurts to bring a shovel for a weekend trip, even if you won't have to use it to dig poop holes

Rent/Bury/Buy
Dead Body sits very nicely in the "this was a good elliptical machine watch" at the gym. Find it on Amazon Prime when you're working out.