October Horror 2011: Day 27 - Cry_Wolf

Cry_Wolf is a 2005 American movie directed by Katie Couric's nephew and stars Not-Thora Birch, Jared Padalecki, and Jon Bon Jovi.

It's a pretty interesting premise:  Owen is the new guy at a preparatory high school in Australia and falls in with a group of students who break out of their dorms at night and gather in the school's chapel to play a game they call Cry Wolf.  The game is a sociology game where one member of the group is designated a Wolf, and nobody in the game knows who.  Each "night" the Wolf "murders" someone.  This is followed by a round of accusations and the townsfolk eventually "lynch" whoever they think is the Wolf.

After a girl is murdered in the nearby woods the students invent a serial killer called The Wolf and write an email to the student body describing the kills he makes as he works through a school.  They design the kills after members of their own group.  As mass hysteria grows they revel in how they're causing it all, until Bon Jovi discovers the fraud and threatens to expel Owen.  I don't remember exactly why they let him stay.

Owen begins receiving threatening IMs and messages from the Wolf, as if he was suddenly a real person.  Paranoia among the group builds and Owen is attacked by someone dressed exactly as the Wolf they made up.  There's a double and triple twist, which aren't actually horrible.

It's a pretty decent mystery/thriller sort of movie, with a fairly inventive story.  It fails to hold attention at points and it's sometimes difficult to follow who the female characters are.  I don't think I would watch it again, but it was actually pretty fun the first time around.  It felt a bit like a late 90's teen slasher movie, just a bit more intelligent.

Horror Season 2011 concludes tomorrow with: The Last Winter, set in the Arctic.