Howl

In Paul Hyett’s Howl, a were­wolf ter­roris­es strand­ed pas­sen­gers on a bro­ken down train. This can be con­densed down to a dis­tinct for­mu­la: mon­ster ter­roris­es vic­tims in orig­i­nal set­ting. How­ev­er, next to oth­er films which fol­low a sim­i­lar­ly sim­ple struc­ture – say Deep Blue Sea (B‑movie about genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied sharks attack­ing a research cen­tre) and Beyond the Rave (Ham­mer revamp in which the undead organ­ise a bac­cha­nal in the woods) – Howl seems rel­a­tive­ly intel­li­gent in com­par­i­son. There’s a full-moon and a spooky for­est, but that’s it in terms of con­ven­tion­al genre iconography.

The film stars up-and-com­ing Ed Speleers as train man­ag­er Joe, who per­fect­ly embod­ies the sym­pa­thet­ic every­man. After los­ing out on a super­vi­sor posi­tion to a sneer­ing col­league, Joe is sent to check tick­ets on a mid­night ser­vice from Lon­don Water­loo to the fic­tion­al sta­tion of East­bor­ough. The only con­so­la­tion is that the women he pines for, Ellen (Hol­ly West­on), is push­ing the refresh­ment trolley.

From Joe’s bemused per­spec­tive, we are intro­duced to the pas­sen­ger-cum-vic­tim stereo­types: an arro­gant banker; a worka­holic busi­ness­woman; a broody delin­quent; a nerdy accoun­tant; a drunk foot­ball fan, replete with a kebab; a miser­ly old cou­ple and a teenage girl who doesn’t under­stand the phrase ​“qui­et zone”. On one hand these pas­sen­gers are just unpleas­ant enough towards Joe that, when the were­wolves descend, there is a vic­ar­i­ous plea­sure to be had in watch­ing them get picked off.

On the oth­er hand, the film con­vinc­ing­ly shows this mot­ley crew’s trans­for­ma­tion from strangers word­less­ly shar­ing a com­mute, into a uni­fied com­mu­ni­ty fight­ing against a com­mon foe. If only because of his conductor’s uni­form, Joe assumes a lead­er­ship role, while Elliot Cowan’s banker char­ac­ter demon­strates how sur­vival instinct can bring out the worst in some. The logo of the train’s man­u­fac­tur­er, Alpha, is a sub­tle com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion that devel­ops as the two vie to take charge of the pack, while the real big dog lurks out­side the carriage.

The were­wolves them­selves are admit­ted­ly quite dis­ap­point­ing. Direc­tor Hyett has worked in var­i­ous make-up depart­ments before direct­ing, so it seems incred­i­ble that he would be sat­is­fied with these lack­lus­tre CG mon­sters; they look more like humans who have been turned inside-out than the fur­ry beasts we have come to expect. They cer­tain­ly aren’t were­wolves of the tra­di­tion­al sort. Once bit­ten, char­ac­ters are trans­formed and don’t have the com­fort of turn­ing human again when morn­ing arrives. Giv­en this con­ta­gion ele­ment, it is worth won­der­ing whether a zom­bie or vam­pire attack might have played out almost iden­ti­cal­ly, if only with less howling.