Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Daniel Yaroshevich I first accidentally saw this movie when I was 9 and I liked this movie ever since. It has the best werewolf design I've ever seen and the main character in this film is a German Shepherd (my favorite dog breed). It might not be the scariest werewolf flick out there, but it is enjoyable. If u want to see a film where a large, smart and powerful dog fights a paranormal shape-shifting creature like the werewolf, then this is the film for you of If u want just wanted to watch a horror film that won't make you sick or scare the absolute crap out of you then I highly recommend this.

Bonehead-XL Whenever "Bad Moon" comes to mind, I always surprised to read it was made in 1996. The early nineties, maybe, the late eighties, more likely, I think. Yet, there is it. Release date: 1996. The film feels much older then that, a deliberate throwback to early eighties creature features, when Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, and Stan Winston redefined monster effects. The film was ignored upon release and remains somewhat obscure to this day. Open-minded horror fans who take a chance on it might find a likable, eccentric werewolf thriller.Based on the novel "Thor" by Wayne Smith, "Bad Moon" is a story about a boy and his dog… And a werewolf. Attorney Janet lives with preteen son Brett in a big house on the edge of the Pacific Northwest forest. Seems the only company the family of two has is Thor, their loyal German Shepherd. That is until Janet's brother Ted comes to stay. Unbeknownst to the family, Ted was bitten by a werewolf while in Nepal. Changing every night, he struggles with his animal tendencies, handcuffing himself to a tree when he transforms. Neither Janet nor Brett connect Ted's reappearance to the vicious mauling deaths in the area. Thor, on the other hand, senses something off about the uncle. The dog keeps a close eye on the man and his nightly rituals. It's not much longer until Ted realizes that Thor is on to his secret.Perhaps the reason the film has never been well-received, besides it generic title, is that "Bad Moon" seems to be a movie with two minds. The films open with a steamy sex scene that ends with a werewolf tearing a woman apart and then having its head blown off. The film then transitions to a little boy playing catch with his dog. The whole film slingshots between those two tones. The gore is fairly explicit, the werewolf crushing a construction worker's head in its jaws, strewing his body parts through a tree. Later, the wolf tears a con man apart with his claws, the blood spraying through the air. When the movie isn't focused on graphic werewolf violence, it's a film about family, including the beloved pet Thor. This schizophrenic tone is most obvious in the final act. While Ted confronts Janet about his lycanthropy, chasing her through the house, Brett sneaks off on his bike, rescuing Thor from the local pound. The hard horror content doesn't always co-exist easily with the Spielbergian family drama.Yet it almost doesn't matter because veteran genre screenwriter turned genre director Eric Red nails the heart of the story. The soul of the film rests behind Thor's vivid eyes and the love his family has for him. If they gave out Oscars to dogs, Primo, the shepherd who plays the part, would have won. I'm only being partially facetious when I say he's the best actor in the film. Any animal lover is bound to have their heart-strings tugged by the scene where Thor is separated from his boy. The last act, where Thor and the werewolf fight, would have been ridiculous if the audience didn't care about Thor as much as the characters do. The movie successfully endears the dog to the viewer, investing "Bad Moon" with far more emotion then it otherwise would have had.The human cast is a bit more mixed. Mariel Hemingway does very well as the single mom, never reduced to a screaming female. She's strong in the face of a petty con men and remains strong when being chased by a werewolf. Mason Gamble as the young boy is less impressive. It's a good thing that the kid is pushed towards the sideline for most of the film because he's not quite convincing. Michael Pare's performance is a bit harder to read. He conveys a threatening attitude subtly, especially when only a blink frightens Thor into attacking. However, moments of bigger emotions seem unconvincing coming out of Pare's mouth. A brief voice-over narration especially doesn't work, Pare given melodramatic dialogue about "the restorative power of love," for goodness' sake.The center piece of any werewolf movie is its werewolf. "Bad Moon" doesn't feature the most original design, your standard up-right dire wolf. However, the effects are convincing. Some might consider them cheesy but I like the close-ups of the drooling, snarling face. The film's relatively small cast keeps the body count low but gore hounds might still find effects of note here. The dismembered body mentioned earlier is especially gruesome. The only effect in the movie that doesn't work is a nightmare sequence featuring a were-dog. It's a silly moment and luckily one the film doesn't focus on. "Werewolf of London" is briefly seen and the film outright pays homage too, with its werewolf vulnerable to regular bullets and Nepal-set opening.Red's direction is handsome and makes good use of its lush shooting location. The score balances frights and lovely orchestral nicely. I'm not surprised that "Bad Moon" bombed in theaters as a post-"Scream" audience probably didn't have much interest in an eighties-style creature feature. The movie's unlikely to blow anyone's socks off but it's a solid werewolf flick nevertheless.

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews I have not read the novel, nor do I particularly intend to. It isn't too difficult to tell that this is basically(that would be completely fine, if it was just, you know, good) a dog movie(right down to the usual near-ending scene of such), with the addition of a werewolf. That likes to play with its food, tends to be utterly incapable of closing its mouth, and the effects of which scream "we paid for this animatronic and darn it, we're gonna use it". The framing seems odd. The pacing only gets to be painful when this tries to build suspense(meanwhile, did it ever occur to them to go for an effective reveal on the creature? Or at least attempt to hide how obviously fake it looks?), with it merely being decent apart from that. The characters, motivations and credibility could use more consistency and quality writing. The script jumps straight into all the pitfalls of clichés and predictable developments, and after it makes an effort to change the familiar rules of the lore(presumably to tailor them to what they wanted to do in this), it proceeds to follow them instead of going with what they changed it to. The music isn't always dreadful, but it is considerably grander than the visuals it's put to, once or twice. The acting is adequate, no one really stands out as either strongly positive or negative(and they didn't have a lot to work with). The actor playing the being does have the voice and the appearance to match it. The kid isn't that expressive. This at most barely reaches the running time of a feature-length production. The camera and editing are powerfully uninspired, when at their best. There's some gratuitous sex and violence, and a little language. This can be fun to MST3K, though beyond that, hope for and expect little satisfaction from this mutt of a picture. I recommend this solely to the biggest fans of canine(think Lassie) and/or undead flicks. 5/10

AloysiusWeasley First off, this movie is BAD. If you're attempting to work through the entire horror section of your local Blockbuster, feel free to give this one a pass. Even if you're a big fan of werewolf movies (as I am), there are better ones to be had, such as American Werewolf in Paris, or even Cursed with Christina Ricci.On to the movie! For starters, the acting in this is horrible - I didn't care a whit for anyone in it, and was puzzling throughout the whole thing why it took them so long to suspect the brother. He acted odd as soon as he reached their house to stay, and by the time they were sitting down to dinner after Thor (the German Sheperd) was taken away, he was acting like a serial killer, only minus the charisma. The lines the kid had were trite and pathetic, and perhaps it was just me, but I found the mother's eyebrows to be quite distracting - they were abnormally dark for the hair color, and screamed "Bad dye job! Bleach me please!". One would think that was a small thing, but watch and see - the camera seems to focus on them throughout the movie, and it was truly distracting. To sum up the acting, perhaps it was the screen writer's fault, but one could pretty much predict what they were going to say a mile off, and I was pretty much hoping for a 'rocks fall, everyone dies' ending by say, the middle of the movie. Best actor was the dog who played Thor, hands down.Scare factor for this movie? 2/10. I tend to jump during scary movies, and though I felt a small bit of unease throughout the thing, there was no point where I even flinched. It's just "Oh, there's the werewolf again, whoopee." And when I say 'unease', don't think the feeling of overwhelming malice in awesome Japanese horror movies, it was a very tiny fraction of that. Personally, there were a small handful of scenes where body parts/gore were seen, and there was a stupid and pointless sex scene in the first 10 minutes (And wow, you get to see a NIPPLE, dude! Booobs!) - thus, I fail to see why this wasn't given a PG-13 rating. If a kid over 10 or 11 sees this, they're not going to be scarred for life, trust.F/X? Well, definitely not as bad as The Howling, but not really anything to write home about, either. The initial werewolf we see in the Amazon looks HORRIBLE. I'd expect to see something like that in a b-movie 70's flick. I will give a bit more credit to the transformation scene much later in the movie, (where the sister discovers her brother is the werewolf) which at least made me stop and examine it, and finally give a nod of faint approval. Definitely not the most realistic thing I've ever seen, but there was a part close to the end of it where his head is all misshapen that made me raise my eyebrows in surprise.I also had to add a more personal bit about the emotional impact of this movie, or the lack thereof. I felt bad for none of the people who were killed - there was a logger doing a survey that got whacked before we found anything about him (after ignoring the alarming sounds of a large predator nearby, Darwin at work here), and a pointless fraud who provoked Thor in an attempt to sue the family who was killed later off-screen. Apparently there were 5 or 6 hikers/logging people who were also killed when the brother was out at the lake in his Airstream. The most horrible point in the movie was where Thor was being taken away by animal control, I really felt for his attempts to get back to his family and protect him from the Bad Person among them. Everybody acts in a manner that screams "Stop doing stupid things!", and wow, am I tired of seeing that in horror movies!I found out this movie was (loosely) based on a book, so perhaps that explains why it's so bad. Apparently, most of the family was cut out (2 kids, a cat, and a father, the latter of which I was wondering the story behind throughout the movie), and the book was from the viewpoint of Thor. Sounds like this is another one where you should read the book, and skip the movie - I know I'll be hunting down the book, myself, though it may be a small chore, since it appears to be out of print. I read a short summary for it, and it positively screams to me that all the interesting bits were hacked out for no particular reason.