Horror Movie Review: 13Hrs (2010)

13Hrs, aka Night Wolf, is a British werewolf horror film which proves, once again, that good werewolf horror films are a rare breed.

Directed by Jonathan Glendening, written by Adam Phillips and starring Isabella Calthorpe, Gemma Atkinson, John Lynch, Joshua Bowman, Antony De Liseo and Tom Felton.

Sarah (Calthorpe) has returned home to England after a few years away in LA. After spending some time with her stepfather (her mother has apparently gone out), she goes to find her brothers. Finding them in the barn with friends and partners having a party, Sarah reconnects before being told of some martial problems that have been occurring between their parents.

A storm is brewing, literally, causing the power to go out. The group head inside the house but on their way to find candles, find blood. Following the trail, they make their way to their parent’s bedroom and find the shredded body of their stepfather.

It looks like he was torn apart by an animal, which he was, as it is what attacks the group now. Trapped inside the house with a wild beast prowling around, things look bleak as the group try to survive the night.

A story without an ounce of originality in it, a bunch of cliched characters and a boring creature that you can barely see because of how dark the film is, 13Hrs is a slog to get through. There’s really nothing good about this film at all with two major flaws standing out more than any other.

The first is the characters and the actors that portray them. The former; a set of awfully written and unlikable idiots with dialogue that is simply cringy most of the time. It’s not that you won’t care about their fate, it’s that you will actively root for their deaths.

Happily, most will die but you won’t see much of it. Which is the second major flaw. This movie is dark and not easy to watch because of that. Half the time, you won’t know who is who, where they are, what is going on or why you’re even bothering watching it.

The whole movie lacks thrills, it lacks scares, it lacks energy and it lacks believability. The latter coming from a ‘twist’ ending that might be the dumbest thing in the movie overall. You know things have gone wrong when a supposedly impactful scene ends up getting a laugh. How can you not laugh when someone does the whole ‘Sam Jackson Deep Blue Sea Rising’ speech before accidently shooting themselves in the face?

It kind of feels like a metaphor for the movie as a whole.