The first thing you notice while watching DARK MOON RISING, a would-be werewolf-themed horror film made on a very low budget, is that it's an open rip-off of TWILIGHT that favours romance over horror content. It's a trailer trash-style film that features rubbish lead actors and poor writing throughout. The horror content is virtually nil and the direction is bad with lots of close-up shots and little varying to break up the tedium. Only the virtue of various slumming-it stars keeps it watchable: in support we get THE RUNNING MAN'S Maria Conchita Alonso as the town sheriff; Max Ryan as a heavy; Billy Drago as his usual sinister character; Sid Haig in a one-scene cameo; plus a minor role for the reliable interesting Chris Mulkey, who appeared in FIRST BLOOD. A shame it's such a dud.

This certainly isn't Twilight, as we at least get to see some nice charlies on Arielle Vandenberg before she was bitten.The action takes a hiatus as we wade through the love story of Amy (Ginny Weirick) and Dan (Chris Divecchio). Dan has a secret that will make this love affair difficult.Seems Dan's daddy (Max Ryan) is looking for him, and he's one bad dude. He leaves a trail of gore wherever he goes.Lots of good favorites to keep you interested: Maria Conchita Alonso as the Sheriff, Sid Haig as Crazy Louis, and Billy Drago as an ex-cop that knows Bender (Ryan) first hand.Has no one here heard of silver bullets?

I've got nothing with vampires or zombies, but for some (probably Freudian) reason I'm very much into werewolf-movies, so I'm easily lured into buying a DVD when there's a menacing full moon and a wolf-like monster on the cover. Which of course is in no way any guarantee for a good movie and a cause for many disappointments. As was the case here.To begin on the positive side. They came up with a rather original premise: a father and a son both turned werewolf and competing with each other: the father being the real evil one, obviously enjoying his powers, the son being the doomed sufferer of the curse. The choice of actors was a fine one: Max Ryan is imposing and scary even without his werewolf-attire, in this movie he has this Dennis Hopper quality that makes you feel he's bad news even when he's just sitting drinking a beer. I very much liked the dark scenes of him picking up a girl in a bar and later on his aggressive behavior in a brothel. His son Dan is played by Chris Divecchio, and to me he's convincing enough as the tall stranger with the dark secret. Divecchio had charisma, his rugged but attractive looks in combination with a sensitive approach of his role make him some kind of anti-hero that can easily explain the attraction he has to Amy. Not to forget his physique, I don't want to be a hypocrite, every time they made him loose his shirt (which was often!) I was in awe. A special mention goes to the fine musical score, I really loved the beautiful songs! With this the positive ends and the many flaws take over. In a werewolf-movie you can come up with as many deep layers as you will or with Shakespearean dialog or Greek-like tragedy, but in the end it always comes down to: how do they do The Monster. Here this was a big disappointment. Obviously the budget was low so they didn't use CGI but chose for the old man-in-a-suit routine. When this film was made it was 2009 and they really made us watch two guys hopping around in a scary suit of black rubber, lots of fuzzy black hair and a big Halloween-mask. I couldn't believe my eyes, the result was ludicrous. It didn't even look like wolves, it was more like son of King Kong attires, jumping up and down like mean chimpanzees. We even see one of them at some point sitting in the top of a leafless tree howling at the moon. A wolf in the top of a tree!! The transformations from human to wolf (that we've seen the last decades done so well in so many movies) were of equal simplicity: as if someone pushed a button and wham: there's the wolf. Anyway, I have to admit that the mutilated bodies and ripped-off body-parts were done rather good and added at least a tinge of convincing horror and gore.The rest of the casting was a bit uneven. Ginny Weirick was absolutely lovely to look at, and since her part didn't require much more than that, she did reasonably well. Her father was played by veteran Chris Mulkey and he delivered a good job as the professional he is. But who came up with miss Alonso as the sheriff?!? To begin with: why did the movie need a female sheriff anyway? It didn't add anything to the story (her tentative romantic involvement with Amy's father didn't add up to anything either) and she must have been by far the most unconvincing sheriff ever in a serious (intended) movie! She walks with a sway and talks with a drawl as if she's perpetually infatuated by booze, she wears a totally unprofessional shirt that leaves her arms and bosom bare (and I don't recall it being that hot!) and carries her weapon as if she's afraid it will blow up in her hands any minute. And when she's asked to inspect a crime scene where the monster killed a dog she looks as a scared housewife expecting a mouse to jump on her! I won't waste too many words on the ending, that was intended as some sort of epic High Noon-like showdown between father and son werewolves. It's enough to imagine the above described gorilla-suits getting at each other in a blaze of growls and hair. Funny, preposterous or degrading, it depends on how sober you are while watching. My final remarks are for the project in general. There was this heavy blanket of morose pretentiousness over the whole thing that in the end left me totally depressed, which in my opinion shouldn't be the way that you want your public to feel after you present them with a solid horror movie: one should feel impressed, thrilled, full of adrenaline, but not depressed! Apart from the few action-filled moments everything goes irritatingly slow, everyone talks deep and meaningful with each other for many boring minutes, the movie is way too long (over two hours!!), and there's a dreadful want of some humor - the whole thing is taking itself much too seriously!

In a small town in the countryside, the teenager Amy (Ginny Weirick) is overprotected by her widower father John (Chris Mulkey). When she meets the newcomer mechanic Dan (Chris Divecchio), they immediately fall in love for each other. Dan discloses to her that he was cursed when he was a child and turns into a werewolf in the full moon. Meanwhile the local sheriff Sam (Maria Conchita Alonso) is investigating the slaughter of people in bloodshed and the murder of several animals in the farm of Crazy Louis (Sid Haig) apparently by a wolf. Out of the blue, the outsider sheriff Charles Thibodeaux (Billy Drago) arrives in her office and tells that the responsible for the deaths is the mean Bender (Max Ryan), who killed Dan's mother and his wife among other victims many years ago. Bender calls Thibodeaux in the sheriff's office telling that he had abducted Amy and scheduling an encounter in the city ruins with his old enemy; Dan, John, Sam, Louis and Thibodeaux head to the spot for a final confrontation to end the curse. The low budget "Dark Moon Rising" is a reasonable movie about werewolf and with improvements could be better and better. The special effects are decent and the plot avoids the usual clichés. However, there are some flaws and mistakes, like for example: (1) Maria Conchita Alonso is totally miscast in the role of a sheriff, with clumsy movements with the guns. The story would work much better swapping Chris Mulkey in the role of the sheriff and Maria Conchita Alonso in the role of Amy's overprotective mother. (2) There are stupid lines, like for example when John asks Amy about the bruises in her face; she should have answered that Dan had protected her instead of the silly argument with her father. (3) The last showdown is ridiculous, since Thibodeaux should have advised the group that only silver bullet could stop Bender. (4) Also in the final confrontation, Dan was the first to convert in werewolf, but he does not attack his father that easily kills Thibodeaux and Louis. (5) Last but not the least; the conclusion is ridiculous with Dan drifting in the desert leaving his car with Amy, and the girl putting roses on the road. In accordance with the fortune teller, the curse would end with the death of Bender provided Dan has not tasted human flesh and blood. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Lua Negra" ("Black Moon")