Sheep Skin (2013)
Summary: Sheep Skin is a gritty and
realistic take on the werewolf sub-genre. The film centers around a
group of friends in a punk rock band who kidnap a business man because
they believe he is actually a werewolf hiding in plain
sight. The group takes the man to a nearby warehouse where they have
one night to prove their suspicious are true. As the night goes on,
tensions mount and the group begins to question their own motives. Are
they right about the man's true identity or have
the made a terrible and deadly mistake?
I love what this movie was attempting to
do. It was a pretty clever trick on the typical werewolf movie. In your
standard werewolf movie, it's normally a struggle within the main
character because he/she finds out they are a werewolf
and don't know how to cope with it. In this case, it's the punk rock
band (whose leader's sister was killed by the werewolf) who put
everything together and confront/kidnap Todd, the business man. They
take him to a warehouse where they try to get him to admit
he is a werewolf. They put him through standard werewolf testing like
holding silver up to his skin and it has no effect on him. Schafer, the
band's leader, begins to doubt whether or not his theory is right which
leads to a rift in the group. This leads to
fighting between the band members, a few side characters being killed,
and eventually the werewolf showing up (I will not say whether it was
Todd or someone else).
There were a few things about this movie
that rubbed me the wrong way. My biggest issue being that for wanting to
take a new spin on the werewolf genre, they missed some of the basics
of the werewolf mythology. Mainly, how to become
a werewolf. The only way to become a werewolf is to be bitten and/or
scratched by a werewolf and survive the attack. If a person is killed by
a werewolf, they are dead. They do not come back to life as a werewolf.
In this movie however, they are of the belief
that a werewolf works the same way as a zombie does. Schafer wasted a
silver bullet by shooting every single person who was killed by the
wolf; presumably to make sure that they didn't come back which wouldn't
have happened anyway. A mistake that would cost
him in the end.
Now for this being a low budget movie, I
was surprised by how well it was done. The story for the most part was
good and very easy to follow. I wish it built a little bit more tension
throughout, but I guess it is what it is. I
must admit however that although the story itself was good and built up
nicely, the ending was a bit disappointing. It was predictable and felt
very rushed.
For the most part, the acting was done very
well. I say for the most part because I wasn't as sold on the
performance of Todd. This could be part of the reason that there wasn't
as much tension built as I would have liked. He was
very soft spoken throughout majority of the movie and showed very
little emotion for someone who was just abducted and is being accused of
being both a murderer and a werewolf.
With all of that being said, I am giving
this movie the benefit of the doubt. It was made on a low budget as is
apparent by the 2 miniscule set locations and the fact that there are
only 7 actors in the whole movie. So going off
what they had to work with, and despite my negative comments, I did
enjoy this movie. Yeah, it could have been better but so could just
about every movie I've ever seen. At the end of the day, the writers and
directors wanted to make something catchy and original
and they succeeded.
Reviewed by Bobby
No comments:
Post a Comment