My quick rating - 2,4/10. The very edge of a #turkey. Almost made it out of the lovely category of do NOT waste your time. But unless you are having a hard time sleeping, I cannot recommend this movie to anyone for any other reason but curing insomnia. Nothing happens for the vast majority of the flick. Just a story of a woman (Michele Martin) who is released from a sanitarium after a suicide attempt to go take care of her grandmother's bookstore for the winter. Let me say that again, she just attempted suicide and now is let out to go isolate at some house for an entire winter. Well, Michele Martin also wrote, directed and I would guess also added the really distracting looking fake snow effect during post-production. So putting that unbelievable part aside, she slowly descends into madness in her own mind. Basically just boring flashbacks, my description sounds far more entertaining than it is. Good thing people start appearing although they do make it unclear if they are there or not at times. If the psychological nightmare she may have been going through was in any way involving enough to make you care, any viewer may have wondered what was real and what wasn't. Since it is all so poorly constructed, no one will care. All of a sudden, everyone seems related and is a werewolf. No real explanation at all to any of this just like the fight in the forest that has some of the cheesiest CGI ever. That scene was just tucked in there for.....I don't know. Just a mess of a film that really never had a point. I would hate to speculate what the point actually was since I believe it was depressing and hits home with someone involved. So I'll stick with the movie itself being an utter waste.

Howl is Michele Martin's first feature as director/writer/star and it plays like an entertainingly heated fever dream. While filmed on a modest indie budget, it's impressive how well Martin has captured the lurid, hallucinatory vibe of the Hammer Horror films of the 1950's-1970's, and mashed that up with classic fairy tale elements (especially Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast) along with a dash of modern sexual awakening (complete with a scary zealot mother) a la Stephen King's Carrie. Martin, Scott Hamm (as a hunky, possibly lupine neighbor),and the rest of the cast are clearly having fun keeping us guessing as to what's real and what's in our heroine's head. And the color red is so playfully front and center it should get co-star billing in this twisted little fable. If you're looking for a contemporary horror flick with a touch of romance and psychosexual awakening, wrapped in a lovingly indie vintage vibe, you'll want to sink your canines into this ambitious first film.

We are all our own haunted houses but few come to grips with the traumas that create the nightmares. If you're looking for a forgettable 2 hours of "typical" this isn't your kind of film. But if you're looking for an indie that keeps after you, insisting that we face up to what's wounded us before we would others or ourselves, then this ones for you. It's not the wolves around us that need naming & taming but those within.