If the embed above misbehaves, the trailer is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NtrjLx-Bgc
Horror has been arranging monster team-ups ever since Universal decided, in 1943, that Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man was a perfectly sensible way for Lon Chaney Jr. to spend a working week. Eighty-odd years later, Dead Howling adds a fresh bout to the fight card: one werewolf against the entire zombie apocalypse. Judging by the new UK trailer, it isn’t the werewolf who should be checking the exits.
This is an Australian production from writer-director John V. Soto (The Gateway, Needle), co-written with James Pickering. Joel Jackson plays Carter, a lycanthrope stranded in a world flattened by a zombie virus, who has been processing the murder of his family by hunting the living dead for sport. As coping mechanisms go, it’s at least more productive than doomscrolling. He finds a new purpose when he rescues two siblings, Megan and Billy, who are heading for a rumoured safe zone. Anyone who has watched a zombie film since Dawn of the Dead parked its survivors in a shopping mall in 1978 will know exactly how much faith to place in a rumoured safe zone.
The official synopsis keeps the source of Carter’s “tremendous power” coyly vague. The trailer is less shy, and suggests that in this particular wasteland, lycanthropy is less an ancient curse than something you get on prescription: survivors appear to be turning to a werewolf super-soldier serum to keep their friends and family alive. It’s the Captain America approach to pest control, except Steve Rogers never had to worry about moulting on the upholstery. As public health policies go, fighting one monster by injecting yourself with another has a certain bleak Outback logic.
The supporting cast is a respectable genre line-up. Ryan Kwanten has form with shapeshifters from his True Blood days, and Tom Burlinson, forever the lad from The Man from Snowy River, swaps horses for something with far worse table manners. Then there’s Temuera Morrison, who, having once supplied the genetic template for an entire clone army as Jango Fett, is arguably the cast member best qualified to hold opinions on super-soldier programmes. Téa Heathcote-Marks plays Megan.
The genre pedigree comes via producer Tom Reeve, who also produced Dog Soldiers, Neil Marshall’s 2002 squaddies-versus-werewolves romp and still the high-water mark for British lycanthropy. Whether Dead Howling can match that film’s mix of blood, banter and battered furniture remains to be seen, but the distributors are keen to wave the connection about, and who could blame them. The other worry the synopsis raises is that Carter’s undead prey are evolving, and that his fellow survivors may be just as dangerous as the corpses. A grim wasteland where the living are worse than the dead has been an Australian speciality since a certain V8 Interceptor first roared down the highway, so Soto is in good company.
Dead Howling runs to 103 minutes and gets its UK premiere as the closing film of Tubi FrightFest Halloween on 31 October, with tickets on sale from 3 October. Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment then releases it in the UK on DVD, Blu-ray and digital from 2 November. The zombies, we are warned, are evolving. Faced with a man who can turn into a wolf on demand, they’d be wise to evolve a sudden fondness for silver jewellery.
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