Good Manners (2017)

Werewolf Wednesday #3: Good Manners (2017)! A Brazilian werewolf film with a black lesbian in the lead and with almost exclusively women in all the main roles

😍 *chef’s kiss* This movie was such a pleasant surprise and truly felt like two movies in one. Things I loved: rather than “getting bitten by a werewolf” this film plays with “what happens if you get knocked up by a werewolf?” and uses things like the “strange cravings” of pregnancy and talking about “the water of the womb” being affected by the full moon (plus a clever scene where the doctor doing the ultrasound comments on “what big” eyes/mouth/hands the fetus has- love a LRRH reference). There’s so much to work with surrounding the idea of a growing werewolf infant/child and stylistically/thematically there were a lot of nods towards Let The Right One In (2008). While loved the infant werewolf design and how dynamic it felt,

the biggest flaw in this movie for me is that they went Full Sonic on the child werewolf CGI design.

I hated it so much and i think it is probably going to be an ongoing frustration as I watch newer werewolf films (my specific gripe about the CGI werewolf designs I’ve seen so far is that the eyes are always so goofy and cartoony and take me away from feeling any real jolt of fear. I think to make the audience believe “this character is now fully a beast” it is necessary to do something more like Pixar did in films like Finding Nemo where Bruce the shark’s eyes become almost blacked-out when he smells blood or how in Brave the mom’s eyes changed when she would switch to being fully a bear.) Anyways, I was surprised by the direction the story went at every turn (which is unusual for a werewolf film!) and fully enjoyed and would definitely recommend this one!