A Werewolf Boy (2012)

Director: Sung-hee Jo

Starring: Joong-Ki Song, Bo-Young Park, Yeong-ran Lee

Summoned by an unexpected phone call, an elderly woman visits the country cottage she lived in as a child. Memories of an orphan boy she knew 47 years ago come flooding back to her.

When you see the word ‘werewolf’ in a title you expect a horror. This was not a horror, though, and neither was it thriller or suspense for that matter. Instead it was a comedy drama – and a beautiful one at that. It is a love story with a deep underlying theme: loyalty.

The werewolf story itself was not very believable and one doesn’t really know if the boy is actually a werewolf or just an experiment. The ‘werewolf’ make-up was also very 1950-ish. The director clearly did not spend much time on effects and substituted that for a good heartwarming story. Despite that, this is a touching love story that is funny and dramatic in equal parts, and the genres blend together perfectly. This was a unique film and I enjoyed it. (If you expect werewolf transformations and gore, though, you will not find it here and might want to give it a skip.)

In Korean.