Howl ***½ (2015, Ed Speleers, Holly Weston, Shauna Macdonald, Amit Shah, Sam Gittins, Elliot Cowan, Sean Pertwee, Duncan Preston, Rosie Day, Ania Marson) – Movie Review

Train guard/ ticket collector Joe (Ed Speleers) is having a very bad day. First he’s passed over for promotion and then the train his new boss sends him out on is attacked by werewolves! But Joe is tougher than he looks. He sets about to organise the handful of late-night passengers to band together to try to survive until morning. (By the way, if you’re a character in a movie, the rule of thumb is, never, ever take the last train or flight or whatever!).

Paul Hyett atones for his nasty first movie The Seasoning House (2012) by coming up with a wryly funny, but still tense and scary Brit horror movie with plenty of gore and a minimum of CGI. It’s got a good script, good characters and good monsters. It’s well acted by a decent cast and is well made. What more do you want? Well, maybe, a bigger, bloodier, more spectacular finish. But this will do very nicely for now.

There are good cameos from Sean Pertwee as the taciturn train driver, Rosie Day (both from The Seasoning House) and Duncan Preston. Also in the cast are Amit Shah as a nerdy accountant, Sam Gittins as mechanical handyman, Elliot Cowan as a nasty, sexist city banker, Holly Weston, Shauna Macdonald, Ania Marson, Calvin Dean and Brett Goldstein.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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