Werewolves: The Dark Survivors is a slow but effective faux documentary

Back in the now long since forgotten and strange world that were the late 2000's and early 2010's documentary and reality TV networks colectively decided Y'know what? We're sick of giving actual information to our viewers, instead, let's make fictional movies and/or shows about obviously fictional concepts and present them as real. Those found footage movies are getting really popular lately, don't they? And, boy oh boy, was this a trend for the next several years. Of course, we all know about the heavy hitters like the Animal Planet anthology series Lost Tapes (2008-2010) or the geniuenly educational titles like Dragons: A fantasy made real (2004) and The Cannibal in the Jungle (2015), as well as their infamous and heavily memed mermaid flicks Mermaids: The Body Found (2011) and it's sequel Meremaids: The New Evidence (2013). Of course, they weren't the only ones doing so. Discovery Channel had Megalodon: the monster shark lives (2013) and Voodoo Sharks (2013) and in 2014, TLC of all people aired The Secret Santa (yes, it's a faux documentary about how Santa Claus is actually real, don't question it), but they were clearly leading the trend.

Being a gullible little kid, I naturally believed all of them upon watching them (with the exception of the ones I haven't seen until I gained cognitive disonance, like Lost Tapes), but now, I can look back at them with fond, nostalgic memories as many other avid viewers of these networks do.

That being said, there is one movie of this type which often gets forgotten, left to rot in the sands of time and space with virtually nobody else on the internet remembering it's existence. I'm of course talking about the 2009 made for TV horror-thriller Werewolves: The Dark Survivors. Was this due to the growing fatigue of the faux documentary trend? Was it because the film was bad? Or could we, maybe, have a hidden gem that simply came out at a wrong point in time? The only way to answer that is to properly review the film, which is what I'll try to do my best in this post, starting off with...

(1) The Writing

Before we get into the review itself, we must first understand as to just what a faux documentary is. The simplest answer would be that it's merely a fictional narrative presented in a documentary format, however, it branches out in a vast number of various subgenres. First on the list are found footage films. One of my favorite, if not my favorite, subgenres, found footage does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a style of filmmaking that's visually supposed to look and feel like raw, authentic and uncensored footage of actual events, usually presented as having been released to the public through law enforcement in order to help solve an ongoing case related to the subject of the presented tapes. It's often believed to have been started by The Blair Witch Project (1999), however, it's roots date back to over a decade prior, with the earliest known example being the Italian film Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Whilst it's most often used in horror and thrillers, it has been known to sneak into other genres as well, such as dark fantasy with Andre Øverdal's 2010 film Trollhunter (Trolljegren), science fiction with Josh Trank's Chronicle (2012) and Matt Reeves' Cloverfield (2008), and, sometimes it even completely omits the darker and more supernatural elements, such as Nima Nourizadeh's comedy Project X (2012).

Next on the list are mock documentaries or mockumentaries, which can basically be described as fictional stories that use the filmmaking style and aesthetics of actual documentaries in order to make their stories look, feel or seem more believable, sometimes by incorporating improvisation or even actual dialoge, with some more notable examples including Larry Charles' infamous comedy Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) and Rémy Nicolas Lucien Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde's 1992 Belgian crime thriller Man Bites Dog (C'est arrivé près de chez vous). The mockumentary oftentimes crosses over with found footage, which results in titles like John Erik Dowdle's psychologycal horror film The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which, I can safely say, without the shadow of a doubt, is the most disturbing film I've ever seen and the closest a piece of visual horror actually came to terrifying me.

After that come documentary dramas, a rather niche genre of film that uses fictional characters and events which are presented as real in order to illustrate potential real world occurences and situations. Now, to tell you the God's honest truth, dear readers, I've had little to no exposure to this subgenre, with one exception, that being Mick Jackson's apocalyptic war film Threads (1984), which resides firmly on both my list of the most disturbing films I've seen and the list of the most unrelentingly bleak ones (take that description as you will).

Some film scholars also include genres such as faction (a style of writing and filmmaking which bases it's story on real figures and events, but, doesn't adapt them directly, instead choosing to use them as a basis for a grounded, albeit, purely fictional story), drama documentaries (documentaries that use dramatized reenactments to tell their story, for example, the 2012 miniseries Andrew Marr's History of the World), dramadocs (a similar form of filmmaking mostly basing itself within traditional journalist ethics and styles) and docudramas (also a similar form of filmmaking, centering more on individual stories, such as biopics or social dramas), however, as these are indeed dramatizations, adaptations and retellings of real world events, I wouldn't count them in this category.

To put it incredibly bluntly, faux documentaries are fictional, scripted stories styled in the format of a documentary that use the genre's hallmark styles and aesthetic in order to make their narrative either more convincing, more relatable or more intimate and personal to the viewer.

Whilst The Dark Survivors does indeed rely on a scripted story for the majority of it's runtime (taking inspiration from it's cousins in the afforementioned found footage subgenre), personally, my favorite part were the documentary segements. I've seen some criticisms of the movie's usage of them, claiming that they, quote on quote, halt the plot, which is true, however, I thought it was a good way for the final product to deliver exposition without the results coming across as forced or unnatural. It reminded me a bit of the fight and power move explanations in the anime Hunter x Hunter (2011-2014), where the plot stops for a brief moment and the abbility a character uses is explained to the audience via some striking visuals and descriptions that have a sort off an encyclopedic vibe to them. The exposition scenes in The Dark Survivors, however, do present us with probably my favorite aspect of the whole film, that being it's unique twist on werewolf mythology. It tries it's best to move away from existing tropes like bites transmitting the contagion and Moon influencing one's transformation (to be fair, both of those elements wouldn't become a part of werewolf folklore until the 1940s anyways), however, still manages to appropriate many takes on pre-existing folklore we know and love today, incorporating elements from Norse sagas, medieval European oral tradition and, even, modern day recountings of encounters with cryptids, most notably the Beast of Bray Road (a bipedal creature with canine features that supposedly stalks the area of Bray Road near the town of Elkhorn, Wisconsin).

Sure, we've seen a hodge podge of various tropes getting mushed together when it comes to the portrayals of every single supernatural creature across all forms of media, however, most of the time the writers don't really tend to consider more than one iteration of the story, instead choosing to either rely on either the most popular set of tropes (creating a safe and easy to consume and understand enviroment for the reader, without much care or thought being put into the grander nuances of the story) or even straight up avoiding to take the exisiting beliefs regarding these creatures (I've spoken a bit more about that in my review of the horror anthology Folklore, which I'll link up here). As an amateur fantasy author myself I do see where such a sentiment is coming from, as I can't expect everyone to be a massive stickler to even the slightest details and do a ton of research by reading various books, visiting websites and forums or atleast through watching and rewatching YouTube videos and documentaries on the topic. I do it because I'm a massive nerd and because I find it equally as fun as the actual writing process itself, somebody else might not have the patience and willpower to commit to all of that and that's perfectly fine. But, enough about my own personal BS (to quote our Lord and Saviour, Cecil Baldwin: Well, hey, I don’t like to talk too much about my personal life here. This is your community news station, not Cecil’s Personal Life Station, right?), now let's get back to me droning about this obscure movie I found whilst browsing YouTube.

The writers of Werewolves: The Dark Survivors understand that the folklore behind lupine theriomorphs (sorry, my inner Jim Butcher fan just spoke through) is far older, more complex and nuanced than simply man turns into a wolf. It's a story with many complex layers and explaning it's entire history and importance in regards to the further development of human culture would take up far more room than most readers of my blog will be willing to devote their time to (if you're interested in the subject, I reccomend picking up Brad Steiger's The Werewolf Book: Encyclopedia of Shape-Shifting Beings for a more in-depth historical and anthropological analysis).

I mentioned that the film also has a significant amount of time devoted to a scripted, non-worldbuilding oriented storyline that serves as the driving force of the project, right? Well, yes, it does. So, what is this awesomely unique and totally original concept that's meant to be at the heart of your story? A series of very brutal murders conducted in animalistic fashion which forces a homicide investigator and a zoologist to join forces and uncover that the sinister culprit might not be off this world. We've seen stories like this get done time and time again and the movie doesn't really attempt to set itself apart from the existing cliches of the paranormal murder mystery genre, which I don't mind for two reasons. Number one: I've made it quite clear that something doesn't need to be original to be good or atleast enjoyable (we've seen very similar stories done to a much better extent, so I'm certainly not complaining). Number two: I love this type of stories and nothing can ever make not enjoy them, sue me, but this is my blog and I do whatever the Hell I want.

So, how is the story itself?

It's executed rather well, flows at the ideal murder mystery pace and gets to the more over-the-top and action oriented fantasy elements like werewolf clans, lone wolves, fight scenes and chase sequences at the very end when the mystery is finally solved and the central conflict and world of the movie had been properly set-up, allowing the audience to get comfortable with it's more out-there elements, preffering to focus on the procedural and horror aspects throught the majority of it's runtime and ends on a neat, easy to understand little bow, perfectly cliche enough to not be groan enducing, however, with enough original twists to bring in new audiences. It's not gonna win any Emmys, but, it's certainly not the worst way to spend an hour of your time.

(My apologies, I know my reviews don't usually feature vertical images or low-rez pics, but I couldn't find many stills from this movie, so I'm working with what I have, ok?)

(2) The Acting

Made-for-TV movies aren't exactly known for their strong casts, despite the fact that, sometimes, they were the jumping off points for the careers of highly talented and succsesful actors (the first example that comes to my mind is Tom Hanks in the wonderfully goofy Christian anti-D&D propaganda film Mazes and Monsters), however, from time to time, one can run into an enjoyable surprise and, for me, this was Werewolves: The Dark Survivors. Now, I'll be honest, the acting here may not be great, however, it's above and beyond what one would come to expect from the product's description.

Out of the whole cast, the two members that stick out the most are arguably our two leads, detective Jack Breedlove and zoologist Ivy Carter, played by Chris Matters and Stephanie Langton respectively. Breedlove is a very simple character archetype. A snarky, rough and tumble investigator whose spent years on the mean streets and is initially distrustful of Carter's scientific methodology and it's application to the case, however, despite that, Breedlove plays into this exceptionally cliche concept quite well. He manages to get the edgy strongman persona across really well without it ever crossing over into cringe territory and throught the whole thing, I was never really outright annoyed by him, which is strange as I find the whole tough, brawn before brains badass archetype to be one of the most unlikeable and uninteresting tropes in fiction (give me a weird, scrawny nerd over a pissy, buff action hero any day of the week). The sincerity that he brings forth in the role is clearly palpable and, as a result, I even ended up getting kind off interested in his overall role in the story, despite my dislikes and reservations. It's a damn shame he never ended up auditioning for anything else because I could see him developing a pretty solid resume.

However, my favorite performance in the movie comes to us from our leading lady, played by Stephanie Langton. Now, Langton does seem to have a far wider acting range than her cohort, having mostly starred in either minor film roles or episodic ones in some pretty solid shows (Atlantis, Law and Order: UK, Murdoch Mysteries and Jekyll), so it's no surprise that her performance in the movie far outshines that of her cohort. She manages to bring a strange sort of energy to the role, unlike the majority of the cast, hence why her performance ends up feeling the most organic and natural out of the bunch, enough to make the slightly cheesy writing geniunely believable and thus, make her admitedley very bland and unmemorable character (who oftentimes commits a lot of exceptionally stupid choices) the most interesting and fun to follow out of the bunch. You believe her determination and scientific curiosity and I, as a huge nerd myself, had always had a soft spot for characters like that, ergo, I'm not surprised by the fact that I fell in love with her performance.

(3) The Effects

One thing I always look forward to upon stumbling across obscure made for TV movies is seeing the glory of practical effects being put up to good use, as despite the fact that a lot of these have low- to mid-sized budgets, they're the perfect example of the less is more principle. For example, look at Gargoyles (1972), which even ended up winning itself a Primetime Emmy award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup.

Other than that though, as I've mentioned quite a few times on this blog, I've began experaincing CGI fatigue as of late. Gone are the days of Jurassic Park (1993), Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and Avatar (2009), when CGI was something new, fresh and convincing. Now we've been so overloaded with blockbusters and spectacles (thanks for nothing Marvel) and grand cinematic epics that are filled to the brim with it, that, even when CGI addmitedely does end up looking good or even great (the first thing that comes to mind would be the 2018 scifi drama Arrival) I end up feeling unfazed and even slightly bored by it. Now, that's not to say all CGI is bad nor that made for TV movies always rely on practical effects (the words SYFY Channel Original Movie and crappy CGI are practically synonymous), but, for the most part, despite practical effects being a lot more cotly than CGI, I appreciate the network decision to pull their strings and present us with some memorable solid looking effects and that's certainly the case here.

I really like the werewolf design here. It's much more wer than it is wolf (if you're unware, the word werewolf comes to us from combination of the Old English words wer, meaning man, and wulf, the meaning of which I don't think I really need to explain, with the word werewolf literally translating to contemporary English as man-wolf), however, given the fact that these aren't supposed to be traditional shapeshifting lycanthropes, and moreso simply humans on a different evolutionary path, so it executes both concepts perfectly fine. Also, I might be reading a bit too much into this, however, given how George Wagner and Curt Siodmak's The Wolf Man (1941) was the oldest preserved film to feature a humanoid werewolf, however, also a progenitor of a lot of the lore elements we've come to expect when we think of werewolves these days (transformation being caused by the full Moon, silver being their ultimate cryptonite, the connection between werewolves and wolfsbane etc.), I have a feeling that giving the werewolf a gruffy, humanoid appearence was an in interesting/tasteful/resepectful hommage to the gothic horror classic that gave birth to one of the most iconic faces in all of horror cinema. If true, then, hats off to the makeup and VFX teams, as well as the writers, for thinking off this clever nod. If not, then, I don't know, mock me viciously like so many people often do.

So, in the end, would I reccomend watching Werewolves: The Dark Survivors?

Whilst the movie does indeed suffer from the typical issues that can be found in a lot of direct to video and made for TV movies, like weak/mediocre acting from the majority of the cast, slightly cheesy writing and the whole combination of the styles of a more traditional documentary (with things like flashy graphics, stock footage and a voiceover) and a standard-ish procedural murder mystery might alienate a lot of potential viewers (plus, it's decidedly not scary, despite being marketed as a horror film). However, if you're a fan of the mockumentary and found footage subgenres then you'll feel right at home watching this one, despite all of it's faults. If you're looking for something to spice up your horrror loving heart with, Werewolves: The Dark Survivors should suceed in doing just that.

Trailers:

Cited sources:

Guiley, R. E.: The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves and Other Monsters, Facts on FIle, Inc., New York, 2005

Lipkin, S. N., Paget, D. and Roscoe, J.: Docudrama and Mock-Documentary: Defining Terms, Propsing Canons in Rhodes, G. D., Springer, J. P. (ed.): Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking, McFrland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, 2006

Steiger, B.: The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shape-Shifting Beings, Visible Ink Press, Detroit, 2012