Dark Moon Rising (2015)

 Dark Moon Rising (2015)

A group of shape-shifting werewolves descend upon a small town in search of a girl who is re-born once every 2000 years. She holds the key to their survival and all will die who stand in their way.

 Director: Justin Price.

Writer: Justin Price.

 Stars: Stasi Esper, Eric Roberts, Khu |

Storyline

In this first installment of the werewolf trilogy, we follow a group of shape-shifting werewolves that appear in a small town in search of a mysterious girl who is re-born once every 2000 years. In order to save their kind from the brink of extinction, they must capture her before she becomes a full fledged Lycan and reclaim her place as the Alpha species. Unknown to them however lurks yet another of her kind secretly living in the same small town. If they can capture both, then they would have the power to control a new species of werewolves and enslave the human race.

Cast

Credited cast:
Anastasia Antonia     Anastasia Antonia     ...    
Dawn (as Stasi Esper)
Eric Roberts     Eric Roberts     ...    
Henrick
Khu     Khu     ...    
Kaio
Billy Blanks     Billy Blanks     ...    
Sheriff Tom
Justin Price     Justin Price     ...    
Sin
Cameron White     Cameron White     ...    
Chace

User Reviews

Do not trust the glowing reviews for this movie
4 August 2015 | by harry-kyles

**UPDATE 7th August*** So it looks like someone involved with the movie got upset with the negative reviews from real viewers and felt the need to post even MORE positive fake reviews on the 6th August under the following usernames......

AlvinJEllis AlvinJShort AlvinAScott AlvinaMGrace AltonJJames AlonzoEPuckett AlmaFSampson AllenNThompson AllenJRawlins AllenJGalvin AllanAHallam AlissaPVillarreal AlisonCChavez AlishiaPGonzales

I guess it could be just a coincidence that all 14 users who posted reviews that day had names that started with AL?

***Original review****

31 positive reviews for this movie (at the time of writing), 24 of them all joined IMDb on the same date 2 years and 6 months ago, and all 31 positive reviews were written on the same day, 9th June 2015. Obviously cast & crew were reviewing themselves and thought pretty highly of their work, they shouldn't have....

So the movie starts with 2 women dressed in skin tight black leather and Lycra fighting each other, with no explanation as to why or who is who, making the entire fight scene pointless because I don't care who wins or loses, and then a guy..... appears...... who..... talks...... so...... slow ...... overacting ..... that you immediately hope that he dies in the next scene. Then some more stuff happens and a character walks towards the camera and it goes out of focus briefly because whoever was meant to keep the character in focus didn't, they made a mistake and somehow the director and editor let it make it into the final cut. This is BEFORE the opening credits start.

The effects - When I saw the first werewolf in the opening scene I couldn't tell if it was bad stop motion or bad CGI, either way it looked bad. There are so many CGI effect shots in this that it gives the impression that a bunch of students from the local film school were all promised if they each did a CGI effect of their choice it would be written into the movie. There are too many effects, all of them are bad, and most of them are pointless and only serve to distract from....

The story - I lost interest. It's obviously meant to be one of these teen Mortal Instruments or Twilight type films, it just wasn't written very well. It ended up a muddled and confusing mess with no clear direction and things happening for seemingly no reason other than the writer thought "this would be cool" so he put it in the script, this is especially true for most of the sequences that involve effects, they're pointless and add nothing to the story. Characters do things that you don't understand because their motivations are unclear. You can't empathize with the characters because they aren't written well enough to feel like real people so you just don't end up caring about them. The story came across as an amateur attempt by a writer/director who lacked focus. It was not helped by....

The acting - Just not good. Eric Roberts is the best actor in this movie by a country mile, that should give you all the information that you need to know. There is one guy who sounds like Christian Bale doing his Batman voice whenever he talks, it's really funny to watch even though I think it's meant to be scary or intimidating, the rest of the cast are unbelievable at best, annoying and distracting at worst. I think the only thing we can blame for this is....

The directing - Where to begin? The director of this movie is also the writer, and his weaknesses in one compound the weaknesses in the other. For example, he writes weak dialogue for his actors and gets such bad performances from them as a director that in some scenes he has us hearing what the characters are thinking so they can explain what just happened. "did I really just say that?" thinks a girl who has just said something embarrassing to a guy she's flirting with, and then "nice save Amy!" when she says something cool in the next sentence to him, it reminded me of the type of thing that would happen in the TV show Scrubs. Remember that this is supposed to be a serious horror/fantasy movie, not a light hearted comedy. I can't say anything good about the directing in this movie, I've touched on a couple of the things already, the bad acting, the over reliance on cheap CGI effects, the technical issues like shots going out of focus, an incohesive story, conflicting tones, the list could go on, and at the end of the day these problems fall squarly on the directors shoulders. Someone should tell the director that filmmaking is about getting the basics right, to use a well known saying "you have to crawl before you can walk", this director tried to come out sprinting and fell flat on his face.

The final verdict - In case you haven't guessed, I don't rate this movie very highly. If you want a werewolf fix I suggest you watch Ginger Snaps or American Werewolf in London, and I can't believe I would ever write these words, go watch Twilight. That is how bad this movie is, I just recommended Twilight over it.

Lows - Acting, directing, story, effects, all worse than most low budget TV shows.

Highs - The bad guy who sounds like Christian Bale doing Batman, he really is funny to listen to, by the end of the movie we were in tears laughing every time he spoke.

If a tween in the house forces you to watch it I suggest alcohol to lessen the pain and increase the humour of the Batman voice guy - 2/10