I recently went through the Twilight movies, i had seen the 1st 2 a while ago but decided to revisit them again followed by the sequels.After I had finished them i decided to go through The Howling movies, i was sure i had seen the 1st but did not remember any of it when i watched it recently followed by the much more many sequels than i thought it had.There were some lame links between most of the Howling movies, they seem to be after thoughts but over all were pretty bad and disappointing. The Howling: Reborn felt like it was not part of the series and the fact that it was 16 years since the previous Howling was the reason. The previous Howlings all felt dated being made through the 80's and 90's but felt like 70's movies.This movie was clearly made to cash in on the Twilight Sagas success. Landon's character kinda grew on me, Lindsey's character felt right from the beginning and Ivana's character was hot and the best in the movie. The rest of the characters were expendable as far as being interesting.The acting was OK, the story was fine too, the werewolf transformation...when it finally happened...was kinda quick...but then again some of the other Howling movies the transformation was painfully slow. The werewolf look wasn't the best by any means especially as modern as this movie is. In the end it had a nice but predictable twist.It is hard to compare this to the other Howling movies and other than all the action taking place in 1 building, it felt closer to the Twilight stuff than The Howling. Overall i think it matches the best of the Howling franchise and the worst of the Twilight franchise.Howling franchise (My ratings):The Howling (1981) (4/10)Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch (1985) (3/10)The Marsupials: Howling III (1987) (4/10)Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) (3/10)Howling V: The Rebirth (1989) (5/10)Howling VI: The Freaks (1991) (4/10)Howling: New Moon Rising (1995) (2/10)The Howling: Reborn (2011) (5/10)Others worth mentioning for comparison:Twilight franchise:Twilight (2008) (5/10)The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) (6/10)The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) (6/10)The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011) (6/10)The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012) (7/10)The Company of Wolves (1984) 6/10)Ginger Snaps (2000) (6/10)Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004) (5/10)Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) (6/10)The Wolfman (2010) (6/10)Red Riding Hood (2011) (6/10)Werewolf: The Beast Among Us (2012) (5/10)Wolves (2014) (5/10)

If you watch The Howling Reborn, you'll immediately notice that you've seen this type of yarn countless times before. The adolescent hero discovers his werewolf tendencies and struggles gamely but predictably to maintain his humanity against his encroaching lycanthropic nature. Teenage angst and identity crisis metaphors abound.It's not necessarily a badly executed horror film. The action sequences are passable. The film makers did use a lot of quick cuts and low lighting where special effects are involved which is usually a sign that they're trying to hide cheap production. In their defense, they get away with it most of the time in this film. However, if you look closely, you'll see that some of the werewolves have odd characteristics that some people have commented they didn't like. I'm not sure if I like them either.The climax of the movie occurs with our hero and his girlfriend running from monsters in their locked down high school as their graduation ceremony takes place outside. The villainous werewolves have a stash of werewolf infected humans captive in the school basement that they intend to unleash on the world as the full moon rises at midnight. If you feel like you saw this on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you probably have. Monsters in the school basement are Sarah Michelle Gellar's responsibility, and she had the sense to turn this script down.Predictably, our teenage werewolf hero is able to overcome the evil werewolf queen with the help of his newly werewolfed girlfriend. All this adds up to a stale movie with no real resemblance to the Howling franchise (a line of films that already has a lot to be sorry for). We do get a small nod to the original Howling with a viral internet video of a werewolf transformation, similar to the end of the original movie. All things considered, you really don't have two hours to spend on this.

In the Shermer High School, the teenager Will Kidman (Landon Liboiron) is bullied by his school mate Roland (Niels Schneider). Will lost his mother when he was born and he lives alone with his father Jack Kidman (Frank Schorpion). Will's best friend is the aspirant horror film director Sachin (Jesse Rath) and he dreams on his mysterious school mate Eliana Wynter (Lindsey Marie Shaw), for whom he has yearned for a long time. On his eighteenth birthday and eve of his graduation day, Will is invited to go to an underground party and he stays with Eliana. Will is drugged by a colleague and he has the sensation that a werewolf attacked people in the party. Out of the blue, Will gets stronger and stronger and he suspects that he might be a werewolf. When the evil Kay (Ivana Milicevic) meets Will at school, he learns dark secrets about his past and finds that Eliana might be in danger."The Howling: Reborn" is a lame movie, with a terrible story with many holes, poor special effects and acting and awful music score. Eliana is a strange character that seems to be strong in the beginning but totally changes her behavior. Will is unstable, and does not seem to know what he wants. Further, he never misses or grieves the deaths of his father and his best friend. A question: why he turns into a werewolf only when he is eighteen? Last but not the least, people are murdered, the school is burnt down but there is no consequence. My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "Gritos de Horror – O Renascimento" ("Screams of Horror – The Rebirth")

There is a theory of film study which asserts that an important factor in how a film is experienced is the time and setting in which one sees it. It's especially true for horror films. Teens who see films like the original Texas Chainsaw and The Howling for the first time decades after they were made will compare them to films like Saw and other films they've seen earlier. People who saw them when they first came out got the full impact of the new ground they were breaking at the time.The Howling: Reborn breaks no new ground. It does however break one of the cardinal rules of screen writing: avoid voice-over as much as possible. This film is plastered wall-to-wall with the pretentious observations of a "teenaged mind." The main characters are like rejects from an MTV dramedy, slinging pseudo-pithy ruminations of teen angst that only a pre-adolescent could find intriguing.It's not all bad though. There is Lindsey Shaw to look at. And the lighting is top notch. Unfortunately the cinematography is lost in a flashy mess of music video after effects and choppy editing, apparently used to cover up the less-than-state-of-the-art CG work.The original Howling was a notable entry in the horror genre. Aside from the fact that it was genuinely scary and atmospheric, it featured the first truly impressive "real time" full body on screen transformation of a man into a werewolf. (Yes American Werewolf had good efx too, if you found it impressive to see one hand transform at a time.) And this was before CG, when make-up artists had to figure out complex robotics combined with masterful sculpted skins.And while the original Howling drew you in with realistic situations and characters, Reborn starts off with a few unreal clunkers. One is a security guard in charge of a school lockdown system that would be the envy of any maximum security prison. The second is when a high school student is pushed against a locker and has a three inch blood-gushing gash sliced across his jugular, and shrugs it off as if the school bully just rubbed a booger in his hair.Not long after that we find ourselves immersed in a wannabe feature length MTV video with standard rock video efx like color desaturation, flash cuts, and worst of all, a string of songs with sappy vocals that make the mickey mouse orchestral score even more mickey mouse.In the end, the bombastic direction and flashy editing fail to make up for what this film lacks: substance.Kids will probably like it though. Fans of the original hoping for a state-of-the-art update will be sorely disappointed.