I'm such a sucker for movies like Howl. Take a group of strangers, stick them in a dire situation and force them to band together in order to survive. In the case of this film, it's a group of people stranded on a broken down commuter train forced to band together to fend off a pack of vicious werewolves. Sounds like my kind of movie.
Joe (played by Ed Speleers) is a guard (or conductor, as we know them in America) for a line of commuter trains servicing the London area to the various suburbs. He's about to get off a long shift when he discovers that 1. He has been turned down for the Supervisor position he applied for and 2. Since someone else called in sick, he has to do one more run, a red-eye train headed for Edinburgh. The passenger list is a light one with only a handful of people on board, but things look up when it turns out a girl he has a crush on, Ellen (played by Holly Weston), is manning the tea trolley. Things take a dark turn when the train has to make an emergency stop after hitting a deer and the driver, Tony (played by Sean Pertwee), goes to investigate and clear the carcass, when he's attacked and dragged away into the woods, leaving the passengers stranded. As the group becomes aware of the situation outside when an attempt to hike to the nearest station goes south, the hastily return to the train and wait for rescue. As the events wear on, a power struggle erupts between Joe and one of the passengers, Adrian (played by Elliot Cowan), as Joe tries to keep order and the passengers safe from the threat outside until help can arrive.
The survival horror genre, which Howl falls neatly into, has a fairly well worn set of tropes which this film includes. But what made the film work for me were how well drawn the characters were as a whole and that made me want to root for them to survive. Ed Speleers makes for a great and unlikely hero as his character of Joe is put through the ringer over the course of the night and quickly grows into an assertive leader of the group. It also had a unique setting of a commuter train, something mundane and everyday, turned into a nightmare scenario. It's also easy for me to get into movies like this because it always gets me thinking of what I would do in this scenario. For the most part, the characters don't really make any bad decisions as the film goes along, which always helps. The film is well directed by Peter Hyett from a script by Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler. The film wastes no time in getting started and keeps a brisk pace all the way through to the end, which in this type of film always helps. The effects are strong as well, with some really interesting creature design on the werewolves, which can always make or break a creature feature like this.
There is one thing about this movie that really bugged me is something that I've seen in a lot of movies and something I've grown really tired of is the bumbling, wimpy fat guy trope. There is a character in this movie that is one of the worst examples of this character type, constantly eating or in the bathroom and exists only to be really pathetic and eventually werewolf chow. Completely useless and really has no point in the movie except to be more cannon fodder. One more death scene. As an overweight person, but also a strong, competent, tough and smart person constantly seeing this image projected back at me as somehow overweight equals weak and pathetic is starting to really bug me. It's a small nitpick in an otherwise satisfying monster movie, but a nitpick nonetheless.
Aside from that though, Howl is a fun monster movie with plenty of suspense and thrills. If you're into this sort of thing, it'd be one worth checking out for sure. It's currently available for streaming on Hulu.
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