I recently watched The Hollow (2015) and was impressed considering its low IMDB rating and its made for TV status. Feeling rather confident I thought I would dredge up another low budget movie with a low IMDB score in the hope that I would yet another horror gem. Guess what? I failed this time, Dire Wolf (2009) is unfortunately completely dire (pun intended).
The plot to Dire Wolf (2009) revolves around a dire wolf, no surprise. The dire wolf was a competitor to the Sabre Tooth cat back 10,000 years ago before they became extinct. Apparently, one of these dire wolves feel into a tar pit attempting to kill its prey and got stuck. Fast forward 10,000 years and we have the same old plot of scientists playing God. In no time flat the dire wolf hybrid escapes and begins to kill people. Can the obsessive compulsive Sherff and his Deputy kill the creature before it kills the entire town? And that is bascially the plot.
The cinematography is poor, no doubt due to the budget a lot of the violence is off screen. The actions shots of the creature attacking people that we do see whilst there is lots of blood and gore it is not very realistic. Talking of not being realistic, the creature itself is dreadful. It is a man in a very obvious looking constume and the jaws of the wolf do not even move! To me it didnt look like a wolf, it seemed to be more bear to me. The acting was also poor and some scenes were funny unintentionally due to over acting and stilted dialogue.
The movie also attempts humour, I think it was aiming to be a comedy horror but unfortunately it did not succeed. The Sheriff, like in so many movies, provides "humour" with his obsessive compulsive behaviour. He likes to align his pens and make sure he polishes his badge for 15 minutes every Thursday etc. After a while it just became boring and the humour falls flat throughout. In the end it was neither comedy not horror but an endurance test for the viewer.
1 out of 10
Summary: avoid, bad movie and not even bad enough to be good. The humour is weak as is the acting, cinematography, dialogue and special effects.