Dark Moon Rising

2009 "Love is a six letter word - "HORROR""
3.9| 2h4m| R| en
Details

Small-town girl meets mysterious drifter boy, they fall in love. Only in this case, the boy brings with him a family curse and unimaginable horror that rains hell upon the small town

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime. Watch Now

Trailers & Clips

Reviews

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
GazerRise Fantastic!
Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Leofwine_draca The first thing you notice while watching DARK MOON RISING, a would-be werewolf-themed horror film made on a very low budget, is that it's an open rip-off of TWILIGHT that favours romance over horror content. It's a trailer trash-style film that features rubbish lead actors and poor writing throughout. The horror content is virtually nil and the direction is bad with lots of close-up shots and little varying to break up the tedium. Only the virtue of various slumming-it stars keeps it watchable: in support we get THE RUNNING MAN'S Maria Conchita Alonso as the town sheriff; Max Ryan as a heavy; Billy Drago as his usual sinister character; Sid Haig in a one-scene cameo; plus a minor role for the reliable interesting Chris Mulkey, who appeared in FIRST BLOOD. A shame it's such a dud.
trashgang When you put the line on your DVD sleeve "twilight meets ginger snaps" than you have put the cat with the milk. Immediately you will refer to Twilight and admit it, Twilight was a big insult to the genre. It had nothing to do with horror or vampires or werewolves. It was just a love story with a strange twist. And I must say that this flick is indeed the same story of Twilight but without the vampires. But it clocks in at around 2 hours and that's a bit too long as did the Twilight shite. It's all about a normal girl falling in love with a stranger who appears to be a werewolf. But not only that, there's another werewolf on the loose. This is Dana Minnie's first attempt to make a horror. Being the story a bit too lame it's good on the gory side. The bites and killings are indeed gory and the guys will be amused by some nudity. Based for me a bit too much on Twilight I would tear it down but due the gory bits I gave it a 3. It's not like Twilight for 5 or 6 year old ones, this is for teenager ready to take some red stuff and a lot of love story. The acting was okay and believable but the werewolves were a bit to much of CGI and you could see the use of blue key. If they only had the werewolves done with real effects in stead of CGI it would have been much better.
Ben Larson This certainly isn't Twilight, as we at least get to see some nice charlies on Arielle Vandenberg before she was bitten.The action takes a hiatus as we wade through the love story of Amy (Ginny Weirick) and Dan (Chris Divecchio). Dan has a secret that will make this love affair difficult.Seems Dan's daddy (Max Ryan) is looking for him, and he's one bad dude. He leaves a trail of gore wherever he goes.Lots of good favorites to keep you interested: Maria Conchita Alonso as the Sheriff, Sid Haig as Crazy Louis, and Billy Drago as an ex-cop that knows Bender (Ryan) first hand.Has no one here heard of silver bullets?
johannes2000-1 I've got nothing with vampires or zombies, but for some (probably Freudian) reason I'm very much into werewolf-movies, so I'm easily lured into buying a DVD when there's a menacing full moon and a wolf-like monster on the cover. Which of course is in no way any guarantee for a good movie and a cause for many disappointments. As was the case here.To begin on the positive side. They came up with a rather original premise: a father and a son both turned werewolf and competing with each other: the father being the real evil one, obviously enjoying his powers, the son being the doomed sufferer of the curse. The choice of actors was a fine one: Max Ryan is imposing and scary even without his werewolf-attire, in this movie he has this Dennis Hopper quality that makes you feel he's bad news even when he's just sitting drinking a beer. I very much liked the dark scenes of him picking up a girl in a bar and later on his aggressive behavior in a brothel. His son Dan is played by Chris Divecchio, and to me he's convincing enough as the tall stranger with the dark secret. Divecchio had charisma, his rugged but attractive looks in combination with a sensitive approach of his role make him some kind of anti-hero that can easily explain the attraction he has to Amy. Not to forget his physique, I don't want to be a hypocrite, every time they made him loose his shirt (which was often!) I was in awe. A special mention goes to the fine musical score, I really loved the beautiful songs! With this the positive ends and the many flaws take over. In a werewolf-movie you can come up with as many deep layers as you will or with Shakespearean dialog or Greek-like tragedy, but in the end it always comes down to: how do they do The Monster. Here this was a big disappointment. Obviously the budget was low so they didn't use CGI but chose for the old man-in-a-suit routine. When this film was made it was 2009 and they really made us watch two guys hopping around in a scary suit of black rubber, lots of fuzzy black hair and a big Halloween-mask. I couldn't believe my eyes, the result was ludicrous. It didn't even look like wolves, it was more like son of King Kong attires, jumping up and down like mean chimpanzees. We even see one of them at some point sitting in the top of a leafless tree howling at the moon. A wolf in the top of a tree!! The transformations from human to wolf (that we've seen the last decades done so well in so many movies) were of equal simplicity: as if someone pushed a button and wham: there's the wolf. Anyway, I have to admit that the mutilated bodies and ripped-off body-parts were done rather good and added at least a tinge of convincing horror and gore.The rest of the casting was a bit uneven. Ginny Weirick was absolutely lovely to look at, and since her part didn't require much more than that, she did reasonably well. Her father was played by veteran Chris Mulkey and he delivered a good job as the professional he is. But who came up with miss Alonso as the sheriff?!? To begin with: why did the movie need a female sheriff anyway? It didn't add anything to the story (her tentative romantic involvement with Amy's father didn't add up to anything either) and she must have been by far the most unconvincing sheriff ever in a serious (intended) movie! She walks with a sway and talks with a drawl as if she's perpetually infatuated by booze, she wears a totally unprofessional shirt that leaves her arms and bosom bare (and I don't recall it being that hot!) and carries her weapon as if she's afraid it will blow up in her hands any minute. And when she's asked to inspect a crime scene where the monster killed a dog she looks as a scared housewife expecting a mouse to jump on her! I won't waste too many words on the ending, that was intended as some sort of epic High Noon-like showdown between father and son werewolves. It's enough to imagine the above described gorilla-suits getting at each other in a blaze of growls and hair. Funny, preposterous or degrading, it depends on how sober you are while watching. My final remarks are for the project in general. There was this heavy blanket of morose pretentiousness over the whole thing that in the end left me totally depressed, which in my opinion shouldn't be the way that you want your public to feel after you present them with a solid horror movie: one should feel impressed, thrilled, full of adrenaline, but not depressed! Apart from the few action-filled moments everything goes irritatingly slow, everyone talks deep and meaningful with each other for many boring minutes, the movie is way too long (over two hours!!), and there's a dreadful want of some humor - the whole thing is taking itself much too seriously!