Where the hell DID this come from? We were told by Joe Nimziki the director and one of the writers of this film that this would follow Joe Dante's classic werewolf film of Howling as in it would buck the trend of late of the angsty, teenage, quasi love story/ supernatural whining that seems to plague the supernatural genres since Twilight's rampant success. So Joe besides having the first name of the director of the first film let me ask you: WHAT THE HELL WAS DIFFERENT?!!!

Ok an over view, the film opens with a woman who is apparently killed by a werewolf but she's pregnant. There's gore, there's promise of something oddly familiar to the first film in that wam bam here we are face to face with werewolves in a sea of humanity. WRONG! Immediately after this promising start we are flung into the angst filled teenage world of Landon Liboiron as Will Kidman complete with sappy emo teenage monologuing just so we know he's an outsider and a geek. Yep breaking no ground what so ever Will is a geeky nerd apparently needing glasses and has asthma. He's lived the life of hum drum, until of course he finds out he's a werewolf.

Let me stop right here for a moment to go over the first of many problems I have with this film. IF you are already an OUTSIDER to humanity why for the love of all things would being a werewolf freak you out? How many geeks out there or average people don't know about werewolves, let me answer for you probably not many. In fact the majority of the film is spent dedicated to showing us Will's trails and tribulations as a teenager coming to copes with being a near adult. Not only that but when will the shock of werewolves just wear off. I think we can safely say that the average joe on the street knows a werewolf when they see one.

So Will quickly goes on the predictable am I a monster or what not. Mean while mom comes back from the dead as a drop dead blonde bomb shell completely different from her previous appearance, has a big reveal with dad whom she apparently kills. She then goes about stalking Will whose stalking a girl he's decided he's fallen in love with and all are soon trapped in a maximum security prison which is of course a high school. You know for a world where werewolves are unknown the high school is pretty good at trapping them INSIDE the building. Soon Mom and Son have that epic battle of monster vs...not so monster. Basing through walls like the Hulk bashing Thor. Son defeats mother but not before the secret army of apparently victims in the basement come to life as werewolves. The movie ends with werewolves rising all over the world and Will and his now werewolf girlfriend giving a world wide broadcast of warning, reminiscence of Karen's reveal in the first film only more lamer. End of film.

But not the end of this review. Oh no I have issues BIG issues here. First off the setting. A high school building that just happens to have metal gates a maximum security state of the art computer run system. Jurassic Park didn't have shit like this but this STONE BRICK old school looking building has it. Enough that our "heros" are trapped inside. I understand the idea of being trapped in a building with werewolves as cool and tension building but I don't know maybe have that werewolf army in the basement trapping people inside? The setting has another problem and that's time. The climax of the film takes place at midnight. Oddly enough this is one of the few high schools I know where the graduating class has it's graduation AT MIDNIGHT on a RAINY night. The whole climax is written horribly in this way and has you more focused on the flaws than on what is going on. The werewolves look good until we see them in full light. Tails a long since desire to be seen on werewolves get there but they are kangaroo in style and flop lifelessly as a stuffed pillow rendering the tails looking ridiculous. Overall the werewolves when see seldom see them do look good but there in lies another flaw. The build up to the monster. This is an age old werewolf trope and in this film it falls apart almost immediately because the set up TELLS us there are werewolves. Audiences aren't dumb we know what we are getting into and don't need the hour and a half to build up to the big reveal.

Reborn does what many reboots do these days. It grabs hold of the hot things going on and puts it all together in a mix mash that simply doesn't work. From the forced love story which when you think about it is very creepy, to the evil mother, to the zombie like invasion of werewolves at the end, the big problem with Reborn is much like all the other Howling films that were direct to video. It's theme is a mess. It can't decide if it's horror, supernatural suspense, supernatural romance, or some sort of lame ass comedy. The constant droning of it's male lead trying desperately to tell us of the trials of being a werewolf made me think the idea was there to make a serious werewolf film but like the character talking it became an emo, self conflicted, mess of a movie trying desperate to cash in on the Twilight crowd as well as the werewolf horror fans. These two things never go well together. Fortunately it looks like Reborn might have been more appropriately titled Stillborn as the Howling series seems, for the moment, to be dead. A sad final chapter to the 1980 classic.