Devour (2026)

I really wanted to like Devour. I'm a sucker for werewolf movies, even the ones I know aren't very good. Give me a monster, some decent creature effects and a little blood, and I'm usually pretty easy to keep happy. Add vampires and a whole bunch of other creatures, and that should have been a great time. That's what makes it so frustrating.

Before watching it, I'd seen some behind-the-scenes stuff showing the practical monsters they built. I love seeing that kind of work, and some of it is actually in the finished movie. When the werewolf first appears, you can tell there was a physical creature there but as the movie goes on, it feels like all that practical work gets pushed aside for AI-generated imagery.

I'm not automatically against AI appearing in a movie. An establishing shot or a little enhancement wasn't going to ruin anything for me. But there's a big difference between that and having an entire action sequence look like one of those AI videos somebody posts on TikTok. The room seems to change from one shot to the next. People are getting thrown through what feels like an unlimited supply of windows. Instead of enjoying the monster tearing things up, I was sitting there wondering what I was even looking at.

And it's not just the effects. There are vampires, a warlock and all these other monsters that keep getting thrown into the story. Devour feels like somebody tried to cram all of those monsters into one movie without figuring out how they fit together. Even the main villain didn't have much menace to him once he was in his human form. I kept thinking he looked like someone's accountant uncle which is not exactly terrifying.

I can enjoy a campy movie that makes absolutely no sense sometimes and I've defended plenty of bad werewolf moviest but there still has to be something there that makes it fun. I kept waiting for the practical monsters and the crazy premise to pay off but unfortunately they never did.

Okay, I went into Devour thinking this would at least be fun. Vampires and a werewolf? I like vampires, and I can enjoy a goofy monster movie. I wasn't expecting anything serious, but even when a movie is supposed to be campy, I need it to make a little sense.

First, the music. I know people love that kind of heavy metal, and that's fine. It's not for me. At all. There were times I wanted to turn the movie off because I didn't want to listen to any more of it. I started feeling like my grandparents, who used to complain that they could make better music banging on pots and pans with a wooden spoon. Well, I get it now because apparently I've become my grandparents.

Then there are the monsters. Vampires, a werewolf, a warlock, people with glowing eyes. Every time I thought I knew what kind of movie this was, something else showed up. It reminded me of somebody watching Supernatural and deciding they wanted every monster from every episode in one movie. Except here I was just going, wait, what is that? Why is that here? What is even happening?

The humor didn't help either. People are getting hurt, and somebody will make a joke at the weirdest possible time. There's a girl who's been badly injured, and one of the characters makes a little comment about her not liking the town. Really? That's what you're going with? Was I supposed to laugh or worry? I honestly couldn't tell.

And the werewolf! At one point she's whimpering and scratching around like a hungry puppy. I was thinking, is this supposed to be funny? Because it was just silly to me. Then when things finally get violent, some of the effects look so strange that I was laughing, but not because the movie made me laugh on purpose.

I don't mind a ridiculous horror movie. This one threw everything at me without giving me much to care about. By the end, I didn't want another monster or another song. I just wanted it to be over.