Spooktober: Werewolf By Night

Marvel’s first Disney+ special has hit our screens. Based on the horror comic, Werewolf By Night shows us the world of monsters and ghouls, something most MCU fans have yet to encounter.

We’re introduced to our main group of characters through a monster hunt, based on the grounds of a dead man’s final wish. The best of the best are all placed into a maze to track down the monster and retrieve the Blood Stone.

First impressions, I love the look of this special. Much like another movie I recently saw, the entire movie is in black and white to pay homage to the monster classic movies of the 30s and 40s.

It pulls a bit of a Wandavision as the only spark of colour is the deep red of the Blood Stone, other than that, everything is completely colourless until the very end when the world is brought to life. I do think the film emulates the return to colour much like The Wizard of Oz.

The action, for the first half of the special at least, isn’t anything extremely impressive. But I do have to admit this does seem to be the first ‘gory’ MCU release to date. There’s a lot of blood and a lot of brutal deaths, the only reason I can think of as to how they could get such shots is because it’s in black and white.

You miss a lot of the gore when it looks like black liquid coming out of someone’s neck.

It got to the halfway point in the special where I wondered if the studio forgot the name of the movie? For a majority of the movie there isn’t a werewolf in sight, I thought they were tricking us.

And although they did deliver some amazing scenes towards the end of the movie with said werewolf, I wish we got to see more of him. I’m also not sure how much of a fan I am of the makeup, it feels way too human to me, personally. However, I can’t really think of any better way they could have done it, so I’ll let it pass for now.

One thing that I was pleasantly surprised by was Man Thing. Now apparently he was in the trailers, and I say apparently because I for one did not see him. So when he appeared out of the bushes I was needless to say excited by his presence.

And I know we’re most likely to never see these characters again, which is a shame because I would definitely like to see another special with them.

Personally, the appeal to me was the look of this movie. I love the way the trailers portrayed it as a 30s movie, I also love that even though it looks like modern day there’s this vintage, old feeling to the sets and cast.

I know some people will and are complaining that there are no connections to the main continuity of the MCU, but poor Marvel can never win. Some people complain that everything has to be connected and it doesn’t make it easy for new fans to watch, and some people complain nothing is connected; what are you going to do?

I enjoy the fact that it isn’t connected to say, Captain America or Iron Man. I like that Werewolf By Night is its own little thing, and I hope to see more special presentations in the future.

There are only a handful of things I could say I didn’t particularly like, for one is the timing. To say it was pushing an hour, the special felt rushed. I also don’t feel as though we get to know our main duo that much, we get bits of backstory here and there but nothing that makes me want to root for them.

I also feel as though a general complaint will be that the werewolf only appeared for a short amount of time, and that it was towards the end of the special. It felt like a bit of a waste, especially when the werewolf is the title character.

Overall, it's a fun special and I do look forward to what Marvel Studios will do with this idea. I don’t see these characters coming to the main MCU timeline nor do I really see them showing up after this, I truly believe this is just a one-off occasion for Halloween.

It was just my luck that I watched it when there was a full moon.

Werewolf By Night gets 3 out of 5 howls from me.