CNN
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There aren’t many teen wolves in “Teen Wolf: The Movie,” but there is a pack of them in “Wolf Pack,” the series premiering the same day, from the same producer and on the same streaming service that is definitely not a spinoff of “Teen Wolf,” but rather adapted from a book series. If that sounds confusing, get in line, but either way, these two Paramount+ projects ultimately feel pretty toothless.
Having set its own course using the title of the 1985 Michael J. Fox movie, the series “Teen Wolf” took a more ambitious leap into a soap-opera-flavored world filled with assorted supernatural creatures – including werewolves, banshees, hellhounds and shapeshifters – running for six seasons on MTV, concluding in 2017.
“Teen Wolf: The Movie” brings back most of the characters, including the now-adult Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed and Tyler Hoechlin, who graduated from the supernatural to superhero as the star of “Superman & Lois” on the CW.
Directed by Russell Mulcahy and produced by Jeff Davis, “Teen Wolf” plunges back into the show’s mythology – including the fate of Allison (Reed), whose character died earlier in the series.
In an interview with SFX magazine, Davis likened the movie to a seventh season of the show, and at well over two hours, it feels that way. Yet the expansive format hasn’t appreciably improved the production values, which rely too much on stylized slow motion (and lots of glowing yellow eyes) in a way that deadens the action.
Any fans of the show howling for encore will likely welcome the “Fangs for the memories” nostalgia, as the characters reunite to face a new and mysterious threat. Even so, the executive falls flat, while the timing mostly feels calibrated to help launch Davis’ new venture, “Wolf Pack,” which awkwardly combines a young-adult sensibility with more explicit sex, language and violence.
In the strange set-up, a raging California wildfire snarls traffic, cutting off motorists that include a bus full of high-school students. During the ensuing chaos something feral and deadly emerges from the surrounding smoke, killing some of those unluckily trapped by the disaster and leaving two of the teens bitten.
Those teens, Everett (Armani Jackson) and Blake (Bella…
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