Silver Bullet (1985)
(In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) I’ve been rediscovering a few surprisingly good Stephen King movie adaptations lately, but Silver Bullet won’t be one of them. At best, it’s a middle-of-the-road adaptation, compensating for a familiar premise with a few quirky details, occasional good moments and a fun performance by a crowd-favourite actor. Another take on the well-worn werewolf mythos, Silver Bullet tells us about a pair of teenagers and their quirky uncle taking on a deadly threat stalking their small town. As the bodies pile up, we’re quite obviously stuck in a 1980s horror film aimed at teenagers—the blood flows, the scares can be silly, and the overall atmosphere is more comforting than any kind of horrifying. Werewolf or not, the structure of the film—with its escalating death count and final confrontation—won’t surprise anyone who’s seen any other horror movie before. Still, a few things do save Silver Bullet from all-out mediocrity. The somewhat sympathetic portrait of a teenage protagonist in a wheelchair (played by Corey Haim) may have been intended as exploitative but ends up interesting in its own way. Having Gary Busey step in as an eccentric, alcoholic uncle isn’t played for laughs as much as you’d think (even the film acknowledge that the guy has issues) but remains distinctive due to Busey himself. Finally, there is some good directing here and there, whether it’s a foggy sequence, or the clever revelation of the human identity of the werewolf—although it’s unclear whether these touches come from credited director Dan Attias or the film’s first director Don Coscarelli. In other words, expect a standard werewolf movie and you just might be mildly satisfied.
