A terrifying evil has emerged. The wolves howl once again, but only a Werewolf like Scott McCall, can gather both new allies and reunite trusted friends to fight back against what could be the most powerful and deadliest enemy. – (Source)

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 39% (Critics) / 79% (Audience)
MetaScore: 45 – mixed or average reviews
Directed By: Russell Mulcahy
Written By: Jeff Davis
Starring: Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed, Tyler Hoechlin, Holland Roden
Studio: Paramount

The Good:
It was nice to see (almost all of) the old gang back together and the actor/character chemistry does a lot of the heavy lifting in this film to the point that I found myself enjoying just seeing these people on my screen despite what they were actually doing and saying.
The choice of The Nogitsune as the movie’s villain was a plus because I love the fact that this ancient evil creature dresses in a leather jacket and tan khakis like a politician who wants to look like a man of the people.

The Bad:
Dylan O’Brien taking a pass on this project really creates a massive vacuum because while Teen Wolf: The Movie tries to make the Scott/Allison romance into the end all be all of the entire Teen Wolf universe, it was Scott and Stiles who were the OTP of this franchise and without Stiles around so much of the emotional core is removed from the group of characters as well as losing the main source of comedic relief.

While Scott, Derek and Sheriff Stilinski (Stile’s dad) all suffer a bit by Stiles being absent, I think Lydia is the most harmed by his absence. The idea that after all the seasons of build up to get Stile nd Lydia into a romance that anyone thought that the brief explanation of Lydia dumping Stiles because she kept having premonitions of his dying was pretty lame and completely ignores who these charcters are supposed to be. Lydia is stubborn as a goat and would’ve spent all of her energy to change what she saw in her visions before she’d have ever dumped Stiles to “protect him” and Stiles would never take whatever excuse Lydia came up with for dumping him without putting up a fight and making an absolute pest of himself by refusing to stay away from her.

And while we are talking about missing characters, not getting Arden Cho back as Scott’s ex-girlfriend (and kitsune) Kira Yukimura makes no sense. The entire plot of this story is about The Nogitsune and kitsunes in general it was very noticeable that the one kitsune that Scott was most close to didn’t make even a cameo appearance. This awkwardness was exacerbated by the introduction of a brand new character, a Japanese woman named Hikari who also happens to be a kitsune, that is basically just Kira by another name.

I also thought the movie did a pretty terrible job at showing the connections between the characters that were in the movie most notably when it came to Mason and Liam. These two were set up to be the Muppet Babies version of Scott and Stiles so to have them in the same scenes together and not have them really interact aside from one sentence between them was noticeably weird.

I don’t know what the budget was for this but man, they really were economical with the amount of times they had the werewolves actually “wolf out”. I guess prosthetic brows and sideburns have seen their prices rise with inflation.

The Ugly:
Everything about this movie felt like it was a hastily thrown together pilot episode for a Teen Wolf reboot featuring Derek Hale’s annoying offspring and considering the only show to come out of the Teen Wolf universe is the Sarah Michelle Gellar headlining Wolf Pack, that seemed like a pretty crappy thing for Jeff Davis and his crew to do to the longtime fans who went into this expecting so much more than what was given.

Final Verdict: A big miss for pretty much any audience that this movie could’ve been aiming for. The fans of the TV show don’t get the emotional story featuring all of the characters they loved and missed seeing weekly while new viewers are handed an impenetrable film that seems more interested in laying the groundwork for a new show featuring a character that really has little about him to care about.

Loomis Rating: Teen Wolf: The Movie gets 2 out of 4 Gun-Totin’ Dr. Loomis’