Cry Wolf (2005) Review

"Avoid suspicion, manipulate your friends, and eliminate your enemies."

-Dodger Allen

Owen Matthews (Julian Morris) is a new student at Westlake Preparatory Academy.  On his first day, he meets a pretty and alluring student, Dodger Allen (Lindy Booth) and that night he is invited to sneak out of the dorms to play a game called Cry Wolf (similar to Mafia) with her and her friends.  After Owen easily wins the game, Dodger comes up with an idea to expand the game.  With the recent murder of a local girl on everyone's mind, Owen, Dodger, and the others mess with everyone by creating a fictional serial killer called The Wolf and try to convince that the any of the students could be his next victim.  But, Owen starts receiving messages from someone claiming to be The Wolf.  Is it one of the others messing with him or is the real killer out there waiting to strike?

What Works:

I actually genuinely enjoyed the first act of the movie when the characters were all playing Cry Wolf.  It looks like a fun game and it was a great way to introduce us to some of the characters.  I would much rather have had a whole movie about them playing this game than what we ended up getting, but it was an interesting setup for the film.

The 3rd act was also somewhat entertaining.  The second act was a slog to get through, but things finally end up getting exciting near the end.  It actually has some energy to it and I was interested in seeing how it would play out.

Although the final twist was incredibly stupid, I'll give the movie points for what they tried to do.  This could have easily been a run-of-the-mill slasher movie and while Cry Wolf still sucks, at least they tried something different.

What Sucks:

The biggest problem with this movie is the characters are just awful.  They're a bunch of spoiled rich kids and all they do is pull hardcore pranks on each other with no thought to the consequences.  I was actually rooting for them all to get killed off because they are such terrible characters.  It's fine if all of the side characters are like that, but even the main protagonist and the love interest both suck.  Owen is whiny and Dodger is manipulative and neither of them are fun to watch.

As I mentioned above, the second act is tough to sit through because nothing really happens except these characters messing with each other.  Even worse is we spend most of the second act on a possible love story between Owen and Dodger and I could not possibly care less.  I wanted both of these characters to die, I don't care if they go on a date or not.

Finally, the final twist of this movie was extremely stupid.  You really expect me to believe that this whole game was planned to the detail by Dodger just so she could get revenge on her cheating boyfriend.  Nope.  No way.  The reveal that she is some sadistic mastermind like Jigsaw or something is ridiculous and laughably stupid.  I think I yelled "F**k off" at my TV when the reveal happened.  I can only suspend my disbelief so much...

Verdict:

Cry Wolf is a stupid horror movie with a solid first act and a mildly entertaining third act.  I give the movie points for trying something different, but it fails pretty spectacularly.  The characters are all terrible, the second act is miserable and the final twist is incredibly stupid.  Don't waste your time.

 3/10: Really Bad