It Be an Evil Moon does not declare itself immediately, but debut feature director Ben Etchells offers snacks to keep us going with a pre-credits sequence – a guy driving on a forest road at night finds something blocking the way. Gets out. Moves it. Gets back in the car. The audience at this point is thinking: “Something got into that car while that guy wasn’t in it.” But just at the moment when whatever is going to pounce does pounce, Etchells does something odd. With a tiny camera move he pulls off the equivalent of the football one two, a flicker of misdirection that bodes well for the rest of the film. The thing that happens is wholly expected and yet also a shock.
Etchells then quickly moves us through a number of situations at speed – a taxi driver enduring a journey with a passenger having a phone conversation so loud telecommunications seem superfluous. Funny. The self-same driver, Freddy (Ian Ray-White), in a bar delivering bespoke drugs to a local hard man. Scary. The hard man’s brother exiting prison and immediately demonstrating exactly why he was in prison in the first place. Shocking. This last one another illustration of Etchells’s facility with did-not-see-that-coming misdirection.
This is a werewolf movie, though it takes a while to say so. It turns out that the taxi driver is a disgraced scientist who, when not working on boutique drugs for local gangster brothers Silon and Milius (both played by a convincingly hard Rod Glenn), is also trying to invent a hair serum that will restore his locks and give him a chance with Karla (Karla Chang), the pretty assistant at the corner shop where he buys vodka (for him) and bananas (for his ancient mother).
Then, one day, Freddy adds wolfsbane to his hair-restorer work-in-progress, rubs a bit onto his pate and – hey presto, wakes up the next morning with a mane that’s dense and long and dark. He recovers his self-confidence and immediately his thoughts turn to Karla. As for his endlessly complaining bed-bound mother, into whose tea he’s poured a good slug of the mixture… well…
In short, things take off in a more recognisably werewolfian direction, with bloodletting, dark humour and animal noises. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Because one of the joys of this movie, until its location shifts to Scotland for a last-act owing a touch to the 1931 Frankenstein movie, has been its cast and its setting in Wallsend, a place full of no-nonsense tough guys. There are terraced streets and neck tattoos and old ladies who dress like old ladies did in the 1950s. Comedy grotesques loom large. Look up Ian Ray-White on the IMDb and his profile picture is of him bending forward to light a cigarette (or it was when I looked). It’s that sort of cast.
Etchells is probably a fan of John Carpenter and multitasks like him too – he writes, directs, produces, does the music, sound, editing, the lot. This movie is a family and friends affair and it shows its lack of resources here and there. The pacing could do with tightening up a bit (a case of editor Etchells not being tough enough with director Etchells). But its strong suit is its story, which takes some cues from Sightseers (the deadpan) and Dog Soldiers (the offal) but remains its own hairy beast. The moments when Freddy fantasises about being a medieval hero winning the heart of fair Karla are both funny and cute and not the sort of thing you expect from a movie made for buttons. Or from a horror movie either. Etchells clearly wants to fight against genre restraints.
It Be an Evil Moon does one other thing that’s unusual. It presents the werewolf as a kind of avenging superhero. This is another good idea and clearly one with legs. Four, to be precise.
It Be an Evil Moon – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
