31 Days of Horror Redux: An American Werewolf in Paris

Welcome to the 31 Days of Horror Redux, a month-long celebration of genre filmmaking. Last time around, I made the recommendations. This time, I will be watching 31 days of films that are completely new to me. I hope you will join me on this journey of discovery.

Day 6: An American Werewolf in Paris, directed by Anthony Waller

There is really only one place to begin here: the CGI monsters. This is a cardinal sin. It is unforgivable. Frankly, a lot of the CGI in this movie is bad, but I understand a mid-budget fright flick faking a scene on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. I even understand some of the silly ghost effects. This is, after all, in a lineage of horror comedies, so some silliness is fair enough.

But, what I don’t understand is taking the defining feature of the original film – indeed, the defining feature of all great werewolf movies – and tossing it right in the trash. We speak, of course, of the practical makeup effects used since the beginning of cinema to transform actors into monsters. I don’t want to ignore the great time-lapse effect in 1941’s The Wolf Man, but really, when we talk about this, we are talking about Rick Baker’s industry-altering work on An American Werewolf in London.

If you have not seen that film, stop reading this, and go watch it. I wrote about it in my initial 31 Days of Horror 10 years ago, which is why it felt fitting to do the followup this time around. I remember the ad campaign for this movie when I was 9 years old. I remember wanting to see it, and you know, I might have enjoyed it as a child. I might not have noticed just how atrocious the effects are, and I would have had no historical context for the great practical effects that came before. Now, however, I do.

One imagines excitement from the filmmakers at the possibilities of CGI, possibly similar to the calling Baker felt to the original film to summon up all of his talent and skill as an artist in service of something grand. Perhaps they even thought this film would do for CGI what London did for makeup effects. But, the result just isn’t up to snuff. It’s not just the fact of using CGI, though that would be bad enough; it’s how bad the CGI looks. The werewolf is the most important part of a werewolf movie, and they blew it.

I don’t want to harp on it. Plenty have written about it before me. It’s jarring and unfortunate. Two words that could also be used to describe the soundtrack. As someone who owned a number of late ‘90s movie soundtracks on CD, trust me when I say this is the most late ‘90s soundtrack of all time. It’s not just that it features songs by Bush, Fastball, and Better Than Ezra, as well as a lengthy montage set to Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on the Sun.” It’s the whole sound and vibe of it. A techno-goth rave atmosphere that would come back into vogue with The Matrix two years later but somehow feels horribly dated here.

Speaking of techno-goth rave atmosphere, that’s as fine a transition as any to talk about the story of this film, which I actually didn’t mind. It follows the Alien to Aliens rule, which is: If one werewolf is good, surely more must be better. In this case, the villains are a cult of Parisian werewolf supremacists who see their curse as a gift and take it upon themselves to cleanse the human race. In the middle of all of this are Tom Everett Scott, the titular American, and Julie Delpy, the tragic werewolf girl he falls in love with.

By this time in her career, Delpy had already become queen of the arthouse with movies like Europa Europa, Before Sunrise, and the Three Colors trilogy. She had also made a stab at crossover popcorn fare already with Stephen Herek’s The Three Musketeers. So, I’m not sure what would have compelled her to make this movie. I hope the answer is: a big check.

No one in this movie does the things a real person would do, even when confronted by unreal circumstances, so it’s hard to get too invested in anyone’s story. Scott is likable and Delpy is wounded, and since they are both very winning actors, we root for them. But, that’s not by virtue of anything going on with the plot. Things happen because they need to happen, people always have just enough information to get from point A to point B, and rules are made up and discarded pretty much on the fly.

None of it holds together very well. Did I have an okay time for less than 100 minutes? Sure, but there are better ways to have a better time. It was always going to be a tall order to drop a belated sequel to a cult classic, and this movie is not up to the task.