As Halloween approaches, the hyperactive Marvel factory has given superheroes a break to let out of the vault some of its creatures that have remained in the shadows of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU): monsters. At the head, the lycanthrope going under the name of Jack Russell, appeared in 1972 in the series Werewolf by Night. Its creators, Roy Thomas and Mike Ploog, having been inspired by the appearance of Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man, by George Waggner (1941), it was logical that this Jack finds himself on the screen one day. Or rather, one night.
night werewolf (VF of Werewolf by Night), the first film by composer Michael Giacchino (whose music is associated with recent franchises star trek, Jurassic World, Spiderman, Planet of the Apes and others Impossible mission) opens with the funeral of Ulysses Bloodstone. Tonight, his successor as head of the monster slayers will be chosen. The aspirants will face each other in a hunt during which everything is permitted. The winner (understand, the survivor) will be the new master of the “blood stone”, a powerful talisman now attached to the back of the most monstrous of monsters. Of him it would be criminal to say more. It would spoil the pleasure of those who know this universe and the surprise of others.
Among the hunters coveting the stone is Elsa Bloodstone, daughter of Ulysses to whom the talisman should have returned had she not turned her back on her family. And Jack, whose stature and looks don’t impress any of the other killers…until his true nature is revealed. To embody them, Laura Donnelly (who cut her teeth on Gothic with the series The Nevers) and the always impeccable Gael García Bernal. They share an (al)chemistry that lights up black and white with a thousand lights.
Games of shadows and light
With an aesthetic homage to German expressionism, using as it should be an omniscient narrator with a voice from beyond the grave, camped in places and settings more real than life (sublime artistic direction by Maya Shimoguchi), staging monsters made of flesh, bones, prostheses, costumes and not special effects, following the scriptwriting codes of the genre and of the time (beautiful work by screenwriters Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron). The medium-length film impresses with its luxurious black and white and its play of light and shadow (hats off to director of photography Zoë White), by the treatment of damaged and aged “film”, by the theatrical realization of a slow calculated playing on close-ups, among other things, with its judicious touches of humour, with its soundtrack well planted in the past, and with its subtext reflection on “Which, human or monster, is the most monstrous? “.
A great success. Until the false note, which rises when all these beautiful and less beautiful people get into action: as choreographed, the clashes between the killers bring us right back into the UCM, which had until then managed to stay background. night werewolf is “a special presentation from Marvel Studios” and is part of Phase 4 of this universe. There was no question of letting us forget it. As if…