Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 15: Teen Wolf

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 15: Teen Wolf

I take one look at the poster for Teen Wolf and the whole movie plays in my head. It's corny and ridiculous, but it knows exactly what it is and just leans into it. Michael J. Fox is a regular kid who has to walk home late one night and gets bitten by a werewolf - then (almost definitely a metaphor for puberty) his body starts changing and he suddenly becomes much more hairy and animalistic. Now he's Teen Wolf, and he's getting into all kinds of wacky shenanigans; chasing squirrels, barking at people, going on a date and having to run into the bathroom because it's a full moon, he suddenly becomes much more aggressive playing football and his teammates who used to make fun of him are now intimidated by him - all that fun stuff that's so easy to write.

Except no, absolutely none of that happens.

Instead, Teen Wolf is gloomy and dark, filled with horribly depressing synth music when there isn't just sad silence, and aggressive, creepy teens that are all clearly played by full-grown adults. It feels more like Risky Business than, I don't know, Teen Wolf.

Teen Wolf doesn't chase squirrels or bark at people, he essentially doesn't act like a wolf at all. We don't even know why he's turning into a wolf until a third of the way into the movie. He just notices long hairs in the locker room at the very beginning for no reason, and then one or two more hints that he's a werewolf happen, then he just turns into a werewolf in the bathroom. Still completely silent about how he's become a werewolf, he opens the door and his dad is waiting outside the door, now also a werewolf. According to the light internet research I just did (and reading Harry Potter), being a werewolf can be hereditary, but it would be a lot simpler and more effective if we just saw Michael J. Fox get bitten.

He doesn't play football (a sport that requires tackling and being animalistic), instead he plays basketball, something literally no wolf could ever do. Wolves do not have hand-eye coordination. No one is frightened or intimidated by him, he doesn't even have to hide being a werewolf, no, as soon as the kids and teachers see that this werewolf is good at basketball he becomes the most popular kid in school. He's the best basketball player on the team (but only as a werewolf) (weird, but fine), he's the biggest partier in school (but only as a werewolf) (that makes sense), the popular girl he's in love with wants to be with him (but only as a werewolf) (okay, that's kinda creepy), he's the lead in the school play (but only as a werewolf) (wait, what?), he's getting all A's in his classes (but only as a werewolf) (wait, are werewolves smart?), and that's pretty much all of act two.

Much like most of the movie, the characters and their relationships often don't make sense. I already mentioned how old the actors that are playing the teens are, which makes the whole tone of the movie much creepier and sadder. Watching actors in their late-20s/early-30s playing seven minutes in heaven (or in this movie's case "two minutes in heaven", what why?) immediately creates an uncanny valley effect of "this feels wrong." But more than that, there's some weirdly written characters in here. Mainly, there's a guy named Stiles (not to be confused with Ryan Stiles from Who's Line is it Anyway?) who seems to be a few characters in one. He starts out as a bizarre side character who wears distracting novelty t-shirts and bothers everyone, but then he becomes weirdly aggressive in pressuring Teen Wolf to get him beer from a liquor store (which he does). He becomes more aggressive and scary when he takes total control over a house party where he forces people to make out (including Teen Wolf with his platonic best friend, Boof (yeah), and he claws her back which seems to be played for a laugh but it's just sad instead). He becomes this maniac and actually makes the real "villain" (Mick, the jock) seem harmless. Stiles is so specific that I feel like he has to be based on someone real, that or they lost an actor and just had Stiles fill a couple different roles. The other creepy character thing is Teen Wolf's dad's relationship with Boof. Again, Boof is Teen Wolf's platonic friend that he obviously ends up with at the end. Teen Wolf's dad loves Boof and keeps encouraging Teen Wolf to ask her out, which is embarrassing but it's something a real parent would do. But the one day Teen Wolf comes home and Boof and his dad are playing basketball together in the backyard. That's unusual. What high schooler plays basketball alone with their friend's dad? How close are these two? Because Teen Wolf looks confused and embarrassed, which implies this has never happened before. Is his dad secretly a creep and just likes having Boof around? What's going on here? I'm scared. Teen Wolf also has a teacher who looks and acts like she's from the 1800's, and he's got a coach who looks dead inside and doesn't care about anything (at one point Teen Wolf comes into his office to talk and the scene essentially goes: Coach: "Talk to me anytime you need." Teen Wolf: "Okay, can I talk to you?" Coach: "Sorry, I'm very busy."). No character makes sense.

Above all of these insane details, the movie is just very lazy. It's a comedy but there's no actual jokes (seriously, there's not a single joke in the movie), there's no emotional core, the characters are completely surface-level, and almost everything in the movie feels like the first thought that the writers had.

Here's where it gets weirder: The budget was one million dollars, which sounds about right, because it looks cheap and there was no effort put into anything. But it made EIGHTY MILLION DOLLARS. It made EIGHTY TIMES its budget. It was number two behind Back to the Future, so clearly people saw two posters with Michael J. Fox on it and around a third of them accidentally walked into the wrong theater. Except they mustn't have, because Teen Wolf got a sequel (with Jason Bateman instead of Fox),  still gets referenced today in shows like How I Met Your Mother (albeit mostly ironically), and in 2011 had a dramatic, Riverdale-esque show on MTV that lasted six years.

I understand an ironic love of this movie. It's a great so-bad-it's-good movie to watch with friends and laugh at how many questions it raises, and for that reason alone I recommend it. However, if anyone likes this movie genuinely, I just can't really see how that's possible. But please tell me why.