Blood Moon (2014) Review: well, um... THAT was something!

A couple of weeks ago, I watched 2014's Blood Moon (not to be confused with several other movies of the same title). I have... a LOT of thoughts. This review will include several spoilers!

You can watch the trailer below:

And you can watch the film in full on Tubi. The IMDB is here if you want to look more at the cast list, and, I have to say, it is a finely stacked cast.

The plot is as follows: a mysterious man is out to stop two bank robber brothers, and ends up helming a rag-tag group of stage coach travelers, each with their own share of surprises, against the forces of darkness. 

Westerns are absolutely not my thing, for a plethora of reasons, but I thought a werewolf movie sent in the Wild West would be interesting. I had the misfortune of sitting through Mad at the Moon just for werewolf film completionism's sake, and it was...unfortunate. Whilst not as unfortunate as Mad at the Moon,  Blood Moon had all the makings of a hit. It had stacked potential. It had a lot of unanswered world building that was being alluded to. But it fell pretty flat.

To put it short: this would have been a stellar anime, but I would have settled for a television series; like a higher-budgeted Buffy or something. As a one shot, standard film running time at around an hour and a half, it just wasn't enough. Like, this could have been some delicious Van Helsing stuff had it had the proper time to flesh itself out.

As I previously mentioned, the cast is stacked. I spent the entire movie thinking that "that one guy" "looks just like George Blagden"--and it turns out it WAS George Blagden. Most of the actors are British, so the accents were OFF, and I couldn't pin point why until I looked at the casting after the fact. Shaun Dooley as Calhoun is as smooth and mysterious as you'd want the Man with No Name trope to be (although he does have a name in this case).  Anna Skellern as Marie, the ultra-sexy widowed saloon girl turned saloon owner is absolutely probably the best character in the whole film. George Blagden and Amber Jean Rowan as newly weds Jakes and Sarah Norman are absolutely adorable together, and the secrets that bubble up to the surface are certainly shocking. George Webster as delightfully foppish Henry is absolutely darling, and probably my favourite of the male figures. There is another hot, young lawman (whose name I cannot remember) who has a subplot with one of the Native characters (more on that in a  second), and this was another case of there being too many characters with too much potential, and why this should have been a series. As for the rest of the cast, they all fit their grizzled coot slots very well, and there is not else much to say about that. 

Now, for some minor spoilers and some gripes about the casting:

• Eleanor Matsuura plays the Diné tracker named Black Deer. She is not a Native actress. She is very beautiful, and very talented, but she is not Native. There are a LOT of aspects of this that make the film uncomfortable for Native viewers. This is one of them. Especially since it is revealed that she has some Medicine later on in the film, it was very uncomfortable.
• The werewolf in this film is an s-word. I will not be typing out the full thing, but I am sure you can use your thinking caps and figure out what I mean. There not being any Native actors in the film and having all the stuff about the s-word got really uncomfy real fast. I need non-Native film makers and writers to leave the s-words alone--not ONLY because Native people aren't even supposed to say those words, but it goes pretty deep into racist territory right quick, every single time. Like, without fail. There was even some "joke" from Black Deer about "fire water," and the characters talking about "them sneaky Injuns" or whatever. And, I get it, it was set it the Wild West and *gestures broadly* ye olde racism, but it... almost felt like an excuse for these British people to just use slurs? 
• I know this is a big one for a lot of people, but the film opens with a horse death. It is very violent. I almost turned the entire movie off because of it.
• The werewolf, as with all good werewolves, is a practical effects beast. It is, unfortunately, also like most werewolves, used too frugally. Definitely the bad guy bank robbers were a horror element in their own right, and some of those scenes were more intense than the werewolf ones.
• The two best characters die. Had I known they were going to die in the beginning, I would have just turned it off. This is another reason why it should have been an anime or a tv series, because they had big personalities and  lots and lots of potential. Especially when the second of my two faves died, I was like, 'well, this movie was a waste of my time, wtf!' It was such a lazy, stupid, and unnecessary writing choice, especially after how GREAT the character had been the entire film.
• There are several really great #MeToo/ GOOD FOR HER moments.  I won't say what they are, but we could use a little more of those moments in films, especially horror movies.

Final Verdict: This film had so much potential. Where it did well, it excelled, and where it failed, it flounders were colossal. I do think it's worth watching at least once, but I don't know if I will watch it again.

Damn, this would have been a great anime, though.