Werewolf by Night (2022)

Marvel Studios surprised us all with a sudden release of their very first TV special, Werewolf by Night (2022).  I had never heard of it until it was suddenly available for streaming on Disney+, but it was apparently a Marvel comic series that's been running since 1972.  Let's discuss it!

SYNOPSIS:
Monster hunters from all across the globe gather at Bloodstone Temple to honor the recently deceased Ulysses Bloodstone, their former leader.  His ultimate weapon which bears his namesake, the Bloodstone, is up for grabs and his widow has prepared a deadly monster hunt to determine who will earn the right to wield the powerful weapon.

REVIEW:
This TV special is visually stunning! With black-and-white film, spooky music, and a ton of practical effects, it successfully mimics the Universal Monsters horror film genre popular in the 30s and 40s.  Even Werewolf by Night himself looks similar to The Wolfman (1966) in appearance.  They went (mostly) practical effects on the werewolf make-up instead of giving him a CGI body like The Hulk.

Werewolf by Night, in all his horror film glory

Oh yeah - that's his actual comic book superhero name: Werewolf by Night.  His alter ego, Jack Russell (Gael García Bernal), is a timid man who has an impressive monster kill tally.  He joins the hunt for his own personal reasons.

The comic book version of Jack Russell was born with the curse of lycanthropy, inherited by an ancestor who was bitten by a werewolf in 1795.  Interestingly, it was his father who activated the werewolf curse by reading about it in the Darkhold, a powerful and evil magic book.  We actually saw the Darkhold in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), earlier this year. Do we now have a movie connection between Marvel's new horror monsters and the previously seen Darkhold?  Only time will tell...

Also joining the hunt is Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), who is the estranged daughter of Ulysses Bloodstone.  She disagrees with the monster hunter's lifestyle and wishes to claim her (forfeited) inheritance from her stepmother so that she can disband the monster hunters once and for all.

She spends the film being tired of dealing with people, being a badass assassin, or scared for her life.  In an age of female empowerment, it's rare to see lead women scared on screen anymore, for fear of angering progressives.  But she managed to pull off the badass hunter vibe, while also being genuinely scared when her life was in danger.  It added a touch of realism to her character, which I appreciated.  Who wouldn't be terrified for their life when trapped and outmatched by a giant monster?  It also calls back to the days of the Universal Monsters, when women were essentially pretty damsels in distress and constantly fearful for their lives. Granted, Elsa is no damsel in distress and proves she can take care of herself, but it adds to the vintage tone of the film to see her scared and a bit vulnerable when confronted with actual monsters.

Elsa Bloodstone, tired of everyone's shit

We also get a small appearance of a monster familiar to long-time Marvel comic book readers: Man-Thing (Carey Jones for motion capture; Jeffrey Ford for voice).  He's an empathetic swamp monster who normally lives in the Florida Everglades, but he finds himself mixed up with the monster hunters. Despite his well-known monster name, in this special he actually goes by his former human name, Ted.

In the comics, he was originally the biochemist Dr. Theodore "Ted" Sallis, of Omaha, Nebraska. He was in the Florida Everglades, researching the development of a new super soldier serum like the one that created Captain America, but found himself running from the technological terrorist organization A.I.M.  Attempting to evade them, he injected himself with the only sample of his serum.  But while he was on the run, he crashed his car into a swamp, where the scientific chemicals in his blood and the magical properties of the swamp transformed him into the giant, lumbering Man-Thing!  Ted's mind was forever lost in that swamp, but the mentally-stunted monster manages to periodically find himself saving the day, sometimes alongside the Avengers themselves.

Man-Thing, making his live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe debut!

The Bloodstone itself gets the honor of being the only color in this film, casting an eerie red glow among the black-and-white scenes.  Near the end of the TV special, we hear Over the Rainbow, sung by Judy Garland, playing as the black-and-white film slowly turns to color.  A very lovely tribute to The Wizard of Oz (1939), a classic film of the same black-and-white era that surprised audiences by changing into a full color spectrum when Dorothy woke up in Oz.

The vibrant red Bloodstone, stealing the scene

RECOMMENDATION:
At 53 minutes, this short film was a brilliant introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's horror genre.  Hopefully it will spawn more monsters and creatures of the night, further expanding the world of the MCU.  We saw Sony fail to introduce Marvel's monsters with the film Morbius, which has become a running joke on the Internet.  But the MCU managed to pull off a vintage-inspired short story, teasing audiences with the darker realm of Marvel and leaving us begging for more.  Surprisingly, this special dodged the TV-MA rating, due to the black-and-white film obscuring the more visceral scenes.  So watch it along with your older children, but you might want to put the young kiddos to bed before putting this on.