Attack of the Werewolves

Story is about a writer who heads off to an old family home in a remote village to get on with some work, unaware that the place has been cursed. The villagers have trapped a werewolf in the catacombs beneath and the only known way of breaking the curse is for the creature to eat someone from the bloodline of the family that was the cause of the problem in the first place - the writer! But there's a second curse - if they don't succeed by a certain date then the entire village populace will become afflicted by the werewolf's shadow...

Promoted as a cross between Shaun of the Dead and Wolf Man, AOTW is kind of what the title suggests: a werewolf movie with a strong undercurrent of pretty black humour. It's not a laugh-per-minute as Shaun is, but there are some great jokes in there that help to keep this entertaining. It is pretty talky for the first half hour but I generally think that this approach is preferable to the in-your-face tactic of everything going wrong from the first minute. The werewolves are pretty cool (great on a decent sound system as there is real guttural bass rumble to the growls) and the escalating nature of the problem leads to a well staged showdown. I had quite a good time with this movie.

The UK Blu-ray Disc (from Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment) is fine in terms of presentation of the film itself - the film is much sharper than DVD, with an attractive colour palette in outdoor scenes - full HD of course (2.39:1 ratio). It's a very realistic look with very little grain. The audio is Spanish language only (with very clear English subtitles) - not something that bothers me as I watch a lot of foreign horror films anyway, but some viewers will be put off by the absence of English audio. It's served up in DTS-HD Master Audio format, either 5.1 or stereo. Surprisingly the only extra is a trailer, but menus are easy to use. I'm not sure if all of the discs are packed in the same way but mine came in a nice holographic slipcase - I picked the disc up in HMV. For the strong audio visual presentation I'd recommend the Blu-ray, as it's not exactly expensive.