TEEN WOLF: THE MOVIE

No. Just really, no.

Okay, TEEN WOLF, when it came on MTV was a werewolf show that seemed to really be edgy, different, visually stunning, and filled with good looking and talented cast members. It didn’t just seem to be, it was. The first two seasons and a half or more were really great TV.

It rode a wave of shows that were truly shocking including BIG LOVE, TRUE BLOOD, THE NEWSROOM, and a few others that did things you didn’t expect. In TRUE BLOOD, this was the cliffhanger where Suki returns home to find her 75 plus year old grandmother torn apart in her kitchen. It was a bold, brave move and unexpected and launched a major series plot that mattered.

ANYONE could die and as long as these shocks made sense and didn’t come too often, they drove the show along into and out of great plots. Unfortunately, as TV tends to do, if something works, they do more of it and other shows imitate it. BUT with shocks and unexpected turns and twists like those, if you do them too often, they become not unexpected.

And the problem is that shows like TRUE BLOOD, never really grew any better than that first season shock of the dead grandma, though the death of Godric came close. That death was either the lamest, more stupid explanation for getting rid of your super powered god like character who would bring a forced, fearful peace on everyone and stop the plots immediately or the most brilliant thing on TV ever. I still can’t decide which. Godric basically sees himself as the cure all God who HAS to force everyone to behave against their will so he basically goes into the sun and kills himself!

It sort of worked and didn’t work and might be, like the death of Adric in DOCTOR WHO, the dividing line between the great first part of an entire series and the lame, awful bad writing second part of an entire series. No, no might about it. After grandma died, TRUE BLOOD ran on but after Godric’s death the quality was just the worst thing on TV. DOCTOR WHO might not be as blatant and had a few good turns after Adric died but NOT many.

I wandered from topic, as usual. On the end of that wave came two shows that probably were responsible for the death of the over egging of shock deaths and shocks overall in TV shows. GAME OF THRONES I watched to the bitter end and basically I went down with the ship. It was truly bad / good TV. But everyone dies, or rather everyone I liked died, mostly the gay male characters and just about every side character that had some value.

I refused to go down with the ship on THE WALKING DEAD. Once Carl and then Jesus (a gay male, being killed off, what a surprise) were killed off, I was done. The show was truly walking on dead fumes at that point anyway and no one left was interesting to me so I left. Both shows overegged the pudding of forcing shocks on us every week and it didn’t work after a while.

TEEN WOLF, after a time, began to introduce potentially great characters (usually male and sometimes gay males) that were more likable, more real, and fresher than the main cast at the times these newer characters were introduced. I would rather watch them. Unfortunately (I have to use that word a lot when going over TEEN WOLF’s entire five year run), these characters lasted between one and five episodes and were killed off as canon fodder. Cannon fodder rarely works on TV now and one can spot cannon fodder characters from a mile away (and there are at least two in TEEN WOLF THE MOVIE while everyone else feels totally safe and not able to really die, even one who does: we can feel he might come back in some later lamer movie or show). Thus, time and time again, interesting new male characters (and a few female ones) came into the show and left just as fast, some of them fully developed and some of them not but I wanted them to be. They looked, all of them, more like the kind of character and actors I’d rather follow.

TEEN WOLF went on for five seasons, probably season three and definitely season four and half of season five well and truly …well, no other way to say this, sucked. With such a great cast, a great premise, and the far too bizarre villains that populated the show, as well as replacements for Alison and the need to give Tyler Posey a girlfriend in the show (just hook him and Stiles up already and be done with it: that would have been a brave move; they gay baited for years and never truly got brave with their gay characters until MAYBE the very end handful of episodes but one gay male vanished from the show without any explanation and the other two, who never met on the series, had a nice romance in it but…it sort of was too little, too late; they were hot though, Jackson and Ethan), the show should have worked. It didn’t. The villains were far too esoteric and had such strong powers as to be illusionary and hallucinatory and yet…they, thankfully never won. The heroes were tortured and yet the main four or so could never die. One of them already died and yet it still felt as if the unsafe arena of seasons one to maybe the first part of season three was gone and replaced by a lame fake show that put characters through the ringers of fake adventures that turned out to be dreams in the end and/or illogical horror nightmares, none of which was as good as they sounded. Not even the clever dialog could save it. There is NO clever dialog in this new movie. TEEN WOLF grew safe and that is the lowest of the low for a horror show.

So, what does this new movie do? Take three or more (I still can’t tell) of the lamest villains and bring all of them back to life again. There’s a lot wrong with this new movie. First of all, it leaves out a lot of characters that circled the main group it does bring back…and there are a lot of both groups. Mason as a sheriff’s deputy? I totally forgot what Mason’s powers were. Was he even a werewolf?

Liam is here, too but he mostly stands around in the climactic series of movie endings that plague this overlong “epic” and I use the term loosely. Mason’s boyfriend, the invisible guy, is not here. In fact, Mason and Liam, best friends, don’t even have any lines or scenes together. That’s a crime.

Okay, Alison is back and that plot mostly works but…both she and Scott has loves in between their break up and her dying. She mentions there was someone else (but she can’t remember his name) and there was. Scott had a few others after Alison died AND before she died, including Kira and Malia or whatever her name is. Of course, Stiles does not appear but his father, the not-retired sheriff, does and oddly mentions that Stiles has his hands full where he is. Doing what? Lydia also mentions a lame nightmare she has about she and Stiles in a car crash that ends in him dying. Is this an explanation of why she stayed away from Stiles? Were they even a couple by the end of the series, after being coupled with so many others? None of the relationships here seem to be the same or even work other than maybe Scott and Alison but that, too, feels forced.

Of course, Jackson gets the best lines and some of them border on being fun and/or funny but his sting (!) is gone. We also never see him turn into the Kanada or whatever that monster was. In fact, Jackson seems a liability as Lydia used to and does here again with being a banshee that hasn’t wailed in years. I sensed a “Lydia will save the day scene with her new wail” coming from miles away. It’s lame. It was as if the script needed everyone to have a character affirming scene or the actors wouldn’t be in it. I say, leave them out of it. Lydia feels tacked onto the movie, just as she did in the last three seasons. NOTHING she does warrants attention in this, despite a good actress playing her.

Also: strong werewolf characters like Liam and Malia stand around watching Scott, Eli and his father Derek battling the villains while…they do nothing.

The villains. They can kill fodder characters while bragging they will kill Scott’s pack and back up allies. They have plenty of chances to but when the main character’s friends and allies are stabbed, they just vanish into clouds and end up in a fantasy land of the villains as…tied up hostages? Does that even make any sense?

If that’s not bad enough….by the time the second hour or so comes about, we definitely feel that Disney like no one will “important” here will really die (and at least both of the deputies that die feel as if…they’re gay males so no change there either!). The movie feels safe as the latter part of the TEEN WOLF series felt and that’s the boring bell sounded for any horror movie or series. This movie feels safe, meandering, and ponderous.

There are at least seven different endings going on here and when the movie should be over and the villains ended, they’re not and they keep coming back for more. It’s amazing any of us will watch this crap to the very end.

Scott and Eli for some reason have to win a lacrosse game to get the crowd out and away from death. I’m not sure what was threatening them. Scott is wounded with wolfbane but burning the wound clears it out and this happens also with Peter (say, wasn’t he the show’s first big bad? And a great one at that?).

Alison turns on the villains when she gets her memory back thanks to Scott and then again thanks to Lydia in two separate scenes!?

The others are trapped in the nightmare world but Lydia’s scream seems to free them and drive the monster villains away. They come back, again.

Derek has to sacrifice himself while his son just watches and so does Scott. I would have liked to see Eli try to rush to his father and Scott have to stop him. That would give a good reason why both didn’t do anything to TRY to save Derek instead of just sitting on their butts watching as Derek is fried to defeat a villain.

Then, the serial killer (yup, another lame villain I forgot about and didn’t care about) is taken to the Arkham like asylum. At that point, I didn’t care.

The only saving grace is the actor who played and the character who was, Eli. This young actor is not only stunning in looks, he can act. He has a strong sense of character and humor. He has the chops to support a new series but the writing around him would have to be strong and here, it’s clearly not. Jeff Davis really does not know how to write good TV any longer and he hadn’t by season three of the original show with the lamest villains and the lamest excuses for explanations and a dragged out, over long series of the most boring arcs resulting in illusions and nightmares that weren’t real, making us lose faith in his “vision” of the show.

So, is this movie worth watching? Hmmm. Not really. It might be worth it to see Eli and it might be worth seeing it to realize that they had a good potential with some good premises and plots but along the way toward the terrible seven way ending of this movie, they somehow lost the good writing and the care that made the first part of the original series so great. No one felt safe in season one to three and everyone felt safe in seasons four and half of five. This is worse: as a movie that might end the franchise, despite Derek dying, even he feels safe. Only new (and gay male) characters can die except for Eli.

So, no, it is probably not worth watching, even for fans. Fans will excite to see the old friends and family back or to have Scott remind us he and Derek are considered “brothers” but the plots are unsatisfying, the “action” tedious and boring after a while, and the entire thing predictable while also being eye opening bad in that no one would write their way out of these ridiculous plots THAT way.

If TEEN WOLF does return, it needs to do so with as little as the main cast involved as possible, if they’re going to leave out some of them, leave out all of them AND some rather strong villains that aren’t fantasy dreams who threaten and never DO. It also needs to focus on Eli in a way that a spinoff should have focused on Liam and Mason and their allies and loves (they could have also used Brett, who was killed off late in the show, wasting a good character and actor).

BTW where was Theo? And Corey? Gosh, this movie was lame. The real heart of the show, Stiles, was also missing. So as for stars, I guess I’d give this one and a half stars or maybe two stars. Out of ten. I wanted this to be good and it almost is but it’s just not worthy of the great premise. I DO want to see Eli in a new series but I doubt that will ever happen. The premiere episode of WOLF PACK was far better than this.