Blood Moon

• Produced and Directed by Jeremy Wooding
• August 25, 2014 (FrightFest)

Travelers on a stagecoach arrive in a deserted mining town under a reddish full moon where they are hunted by a skin walker.

I went into Blood Moon a little nervous. It was clearly a low to no budget film but that wasn’t what made me nervous. What made me nervous is it appears difficult to make an entertaining horror Western. I’ve seen a few and most are just bad to extremely mediocre. While this one isn’t genuinely scary, it does create an effective atmosphere of tension in a story that’s better executed than it should be.

To a certain extent I found it a bit reminiscent of Dog Soldiers. Not a direct rip-off, but rather much like Dog Soldiers, here we have a group of well-armed individuals getting stuck in an isolated location. In this case, it’s an isolated (and now empty) town that a stagecoach stops in to get a few fresh horses and something to eat.

In this story there’s a mysterious stranger only referred to as ‘Calhoun’ (Shaun Dooley) that they manage to keep mysterious the whole time yet give him enough substance that he’s not a plot device but an actual character. And every time people try to delve into his past by asking where he’s from (which would lead to a whole narrative can of worms being opened) he responds with “I’d tell you, but you’ve never heard of it.” It’s a great line used repeatedly that just works so well to deflect. And it doesn’t hurt that the actor doesn’t play his part goofy (same as the others here) but rather takes it seriously.

By the end of Blood Moon, Calhoun is implied to be going around from place to place helping out individuals dealing with the supernatural. Great premise for a film series, but it looks as if not such a thing happened here. It neatly explains how he found himself in the situation.

Given the general cheapness of the production I was expecting trashy fun but the narrative and characterization was quality. Those involved gave it their all and it shows in the end product. There are no big names but they do a fine job. The biggest ball drop in the narrative is the inclusion of bit involving Black Deer (Eleanor Matsuura). Her trip with the sheriff padded the film out but did nothing for the story. Any information it provided was paralleled in the main story.

There are no great character arcs. Nobody comes out the other side of the story different than when they started. It is a survival story that uses Native American folklore to explain its werewolf. Nice touch rather than using the better-known explanation.

Blood Moon is not a deep movie but it’s a very entertaining movie. And most importantly, this is a low budget film and they were aware of that. They keep the reveal of the werewolf to the very end and don’t linger on too much on it. They could’ve gotten away with showing more werewolf as the costume isn’t bad, but it’s still a smart move.

Blood Moon is a great western monster movie. It’s nothing deep, but it is very entertaining. There’s excitement and maybe a chill or two to be had and one definite jump scare. It’s an entertaining 90 minutes that you will not regret experiencing if you like Westerns or horror.