Louisiana is no stranger to supernatural shenanigans and one of my favorites is the titular blood-sucking werewolf. A bit of Cajun and French-Canadian folklore (from the French loup-garou) in the form of man-wolf with one hell of mean streak. What’s not to love for any over-imaginative monster kid? Parole officer Claude Bruneaux is tracking a missing convict and lands in a tiny swamp community facing a big ol’ hairy problem. A swamp witch in Tia Dalma cosplay summons the monster to take care of some young dope’s problem involving protection for his “operation”. His name is Ian and he’s a dickhead. The delightfully lame beast shows up and bitch slaps Ian’s poor-man’s Dermot Mulroney partner into oblivion. Next we have family drama where our hero Claude is on the phone with his ex and he just wants to talk to his daughter. She does not want to talk to him. THE DRAMA! Dejected and probably a little buzzed, Claude puts on his best camouflage dress shirt to greet his old boss Mitch (cheapjack legend Joe Estevez) who is dropping off some mail. He’s his ex’s father so it’s awkward as hell. But I feel any conversation where you’re basking in the glory of Joe Estevez would be awkward as hell. Claude drinks some and opens his mail, slowly and to a moody jazz score. The film lethargically chugs along until Claude is forced to go looking for the missing felon when he no-shows work and the place he’s staying is full of a bunch of concerning shit. Blood, meth, destruction and a gun will always paint an ex-con in a bad light. The missing man’s coworker points Claude towards Ian and his operation consisting of a few overdramatic idiots with a scenery chewing problem. Most of them die shortly after being introduced. The rugaru punches another poor sap into oblivion. The attack leaves one of Ian’s men injured in the eyeball and he has no problem letting the police know who dumped him on the side of the road and drove off. That brings Claude to the hospital to talk to the young dope. The dope lets the parole officer know that some sort of creature from hell attacked him. Claude’s on the case and there is no fire under his ass so the nearly two hour runtime is beginning to make more sense. “Colorful” locals add nothing but annoyance and scenes play out that feel like they could have been easily avoided. Unless you take inspiration from Claude talking some sense into a young offender as heroic music swells in the background but if you do, I’m sorry your life is like this. Claude keeps digging and laughs off the idea about a swamp witch conjuring a monster and we get a history lesson on the rugaru from a local theater actor and Claude does some laptop research because if this movie needs anything, it’s a man looking up stuff on the internet. The injured dope shows up at Claude’s door now sporting an eyepatch and claims he needs Claude’s help because Ian is out to kill him. Ian does very little to convince as a dangerous bayou drug Don and every other human does very little to convince they have ever held a conversation with an adult before. The rugaru lazily claims victims as all this bullshit goes on. A visit to a former witch shares even more history about the beast and offers up a hint as to how to defeat the damn thing. Ian’s boss gets annoyed with the probation officer and that lead’s to a kidnapping, the reveal of corruption (in the form of an incredibly schlubby deputy) and the triumphant (eventual) return of the barely seen Joe Estevez. The lackadaisical vibe of the whole damn thing has its charm but a majority of the time you feel every damn stretched out minute as conversations hit like someone kindly making small talk while being to ashamed to admit they’ve had to take a piss for the last couple of hours. The cheap monster hijinks are wonderful when the movie remembers they have a shoddy creature at their disposal and I’m not talking about Mr. Estevez. It’s not great and could have really used a shot of adrenaline at some point to move things along or maybe more money for good ol’ Joe so he could be featured in more scenes or maybe more of Ian being terrible at being a bad guy. Anything would have helped.
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