Toronto Star - October 15, 1995

"Toronto kids carry King's werewolf movie"
Ron Base

This is not just Silver Bullet (at the Uptown). This is Stephen King's Silver Bullet. That is to say the bestselling author of the macabre now has his name in a place usually reserved only for box office stars, hot directors and Neil Simon - above the title.

While it is worthy of a tip of your popcorn box to see a writer exercising that sort of clout, one cannot help wonder if Silver Bullet is the vehicle for which King wants to be too loudly celebrated.

Silver Bullet is not about monster cars (Christine), deadly dogs (Cujo), kids who start fires (Firestarter), those subjects having already been covered in previous movies based on King's prolific works. This is a werewolf movie - Stephen King's werewolf movie. As such there is some demand upon Silver Bullet to be at least a different werewolf movie. Unfortunately, this is precisely where the whole enterprise falls down. There may not be a different werewolf movie. At least not since The Howling, something of a benchmark in the genre.

Smalltown setting

As usual when King is concerned, we must head immediately for small town America. The tiny hamlet of Tarker's Mills is being menaced by an unknown monster who literally tears his victims apart and causes the sort of panic that starts the local yokels forming vigilante groups and movie audiences to conjuring visions of Jaws ripoffs.

There are the tiresomely predictable monster point-of-view shots, lots of heavy breathing (borrowed from the slasher movies), displays of bloody and torn flesh, and the sort of artfully diffused lighting associated with Steven Spielberg (the director Daniel Attias worked as an assistant director on E.T.) King, who wrote the screenplay from a novelette of his titled Cycle Of The Werewolf, is slow to understand that the movie's sole claim to originality lies in the appearance of Marty Coslow (Corey Haim), a 13-year-old, crippled since birth and confined to a motorized wheelchair he calls the Silver Bullet. It is only when Marty and his sister Jane (Megan Follows) begin to believe there is a werewolf, and discover its identity, that the movie comes to fitful life.

Haim and Follows, who both live in Toronto, possess the natural charm and believability needed to get the audience caught up in the nonsense. You care for them, thus latter stages of the movie get much more of your attention - and a few more scares - than they would otherwise ever warrant. Bear costume Gary Busey, the actor who walks like a mountain, is around to drink Wild Turkey and shake his head in disbelief. Busey is okay, but the movie would have been much more fun with just the kids taking on the werewolf, leaving Uncle Red at home with his Wild Turkey.

When the werewolf finally does show himself, he looks, well, like a guy dressed up in a bear costume. Carlo Rambaldi, the Italian designer who also created King Kong, and E.T. is said to have worked long and hard to create the right werewolf. What's on the screen looks as though Rambaldi went out and rented the costume at Malabar's for Halloween. Or maybe it's Stephen King in the bear suit. After all, it is Stephen King's Silver Bullet.

Source: Toronto Star