There’s not a lot of complicated story in End of the Road. It is pretty much just a werewolf killing so, it’s hard to criticise something that isn’t there. It’s a fun 10 minutes or so, even if there’s no real ‘point’ to it other than ‘werewolves are cool, yo’. It would be interesting to see this fleshed out into a feature film, but as there is so little there in terms of story, it would need a lot of fleshing out.
In summary, it’s a cool 10-minute short film of a werewolf killing people. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that, and that’s okay.
You can check out End of the Road for yourself at http://www.unmannedmedia.com.
Review: End of the Road
By Ross Wildish - 8th May 2016
When it comes to werewolves and vampires, I have a soft spot for the former. Unfortunately, they are somewhat neglected in cinema nowadays. Perhaps big hairy beast-men aren’t as sexy as pale-toothy teenagers. Either way, it’s nice to see another werewolf flick - even a very brief short such as Unmanned Media’s End of the Road.
The premise of End of the Road is very simple: strange, seemingly homeless man gets taken into a diner by a kind waitress. Unbeknownst to her, the man is cursed with lycanthropy, and human flesh soon gets added to the menu.
Being so short, there’s not a huge amount that can be said about End of the Road, though it has a seemingly high production value for such a short film and is very nicely shot. Some of the acting is a little sketchy towards the beginning, but being a short film, things soon heat up and the acting gets a lot better as the horror kicks in.
The werewolf itself is only briefly seen, and the few glimpses we get are shot in a secretive manner. It’s a great technique that seems to be lost in an age of CGI-laden cinema where viewers expect to see monsters in their full glory. If you’re watching this just to see the werewolf, you will be disappointed. The shots we see of the beast are very well framed, showing just enough to know what we’re dealing with. It’s also a clever move for a short indie film, as it’s very difficult to decide whether the SFX were bad or not when you barely see any.
