It takes a while for It Be an Evil Moon to declare itself, but debut feature director Ben Etchells gives us something to snack on before it does with a pre-credits sequence – a guy driving at night in a forest finds his way blocked by something in the road. Gets out. Moves it. Gets back into the car. At this point the the entire audience is thinking “Something got into that car while you were out of it.” But Etchells does something odd just at the moment when whatever is going to pounce does pounce. With a flicker of a camera movement 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, while wholly expected, also comes as a shock.
Etchells then quickly moves us through a number of situations at speed – a complete dick being picked by up a taxi driver and having one of those loud conversations as if he were the only guy in the car. Funny. Freddy (Ian Ray-White), the self-same driver, 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 too (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 beast. The moment when Freddy fantasises over being a medieval hero who can win 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
