ShangLuda
Admirable film.
SteinMo
What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.
Derrick Gibbons
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
Leofwine_draca
LATE PHASES is another low budget werewolf film that feels a bit like a 'mumblegore' effort. The cast play run-down, depressed and dirty old characters eking out a living in a close-up forest town. Mysterious deaths plague the vicinity and it soon transpires that the culprit is, you guessed it, a were-beast. Sadly I found this film pretty routine and uninteresting. It has a few decent bits of werewolf action and some good transformations for the budget, but the rest of the film singularly lacks suspense and finesse. Tom Noonan plays the priest and is the only actor I recognised.
sol-
Puzzled by a series of bizarre animal attacks, a blind war veteran begins to suspect that a werewolf resides in his retirement community in this offbeat take on the horror subgenre. While the film has some unnerving attack scenes and very graphic transformation effects, much of the horror is implied and the film manages to be unsettling with overt horror kept at a minimum. Nick Damici is excellent in the lead role with a world-weariness that reflects the film's title (late phases of life) and yet also a passion for a life that he does not realise himself until the werewolf threat surfaces. Indeed, while the werewolf combat scenes are few and far between, it is the scenes of Damici investigating the mystery, consulting a gun salesman and so on that highlight a newfound zest for life despite his earlier claims that he is ready to die. The film has lots of effective dark humour too, such as the police who dismiss the animal attacks as somewhat expected (!) given how defenseless old people are and do not think twice about them. Damici also does a great job making light of his blindness where possible. For all its virtues, the film falls apart a bit towards the end as the werewolf attacks heighten; the sentimental note that the film ends on also does not quite feel right. There is, however, a lot to like in the idea of a blind person being the best equipped to take on a werewolf with all other senses heightened as a result of not being able to see. The film is blessed with several solid supporting turns too, especially from Ethan Embry as Damici's worried son and Tom Noonan as the local priest.
Red-Barracuda
A blind war veteran moves to a retirement community. He soon he realises that the area is plagued by werewolf attacks.Along with the Spanish comedy-horror Attack of the Werewolves (2011), Late Phases is among the best werewolf movies of the past few years for me. It benefits in a large part from having an interesting protagonist very well played by Nick Damici. He is a well-developed character whose spiky nature is used as an effective inroad for the audience quickly getting to know the community where the action takes place. His blindness also adds an additional angle, where he is simultaneously more vulnerable to the physical dangers but is more attune to what is going on under the surface. This latter element is typified by a mystery thread to the plot which is quite common in werewolf films whereby we try to find out who in the cast is the lycanthrope.The film benefited also from having a retro feel to it. I was almost put to mind of the kind of thing John Carpenter might have made back in the 80's if he had directed a werewolf movie. The music certainly harked back to that era with its moody synth heavy sounds being a very effective mood setter. Quite a few people seem to have a problem with the werewolf make-up in this one but I must say that I disagree. Pleasingly the film-makers opted to go for costumes and physical effects as opposed to cheap CGI and the result – to me at least – was quite organic looking monsters. There was one transformation scene, and while it didn't bring anything new to the table exactly, it was executed very well in my opinion. My favourite individual moment, however, was the scene where a werewolf leaps into the air and crashes down on a car windshield. It was an unusual and menacing moment which really stayed in the memory.All things considered, I have to put this down as a fine effort. With strong acting, a decent script, some good atmosphere and a few memorable werewolf scenes, I think this can definitely be considered a superior effort in its respective sub-genre.
Argemaluco
The "geriatric horror" subject and the picturesque rural atmosphere of Late Phases might suggest some resemblance to the film Bubba Ho-Tep, but I found it more similar to Silver Bullet, because both include tenacious main characters following the track of a werewolf, defying their physical disabilities and the incredulity of those around them. In Silver Bullet, the hero was a boy on a wheelchair, and in Late Phases, we have a sightless man; but both movies share the value and sense of duty impulsing their main characters, something which brings them more deepness than other samples of lycanthropic cinema. I also want to point out the fact that Late Phases doesn't exclusively exist to display its monster; on the opposite, the screenplay places the main character's investigation on the spotlight, gradually plunging us into the experience of the sightless man, who employs his sharp instincts and agile mind to implement a plan which could kill the creature stalking during the night... or run the risk of ending up as dead as the people who were victims of "domestic accidents" and "bear attacks" (according to the local police). And we also have Nick Damici's solid performance, displaying conviction and personality in his role. Screenwriter Eric Stolze keeps the story on a constant movement, even though he's not afraid of occasionally stopping to focus on an introspective moment from the main character, or to point out the injustice against "older adults", relegating them to oblivion when they still have a lot to offer to society, or to their own families. However, Stolze also portrays the other side of the problem in the shape of the main character's son, who doesn't know how to handle such a difficult and stubborn father. We rarely find these topics in horror cinema, and that's why Late Phases feels like something special which transcends genres and makes us forget of a few small logical leaps which slightly decrease the realism of the story, which is very human and endearing for the rest. I had seen werewolves employed as a metaphor of addiction (The Howling), the teenage hormones (Ginger Snaps) and the futility of war (Dog Soldiers); and in Late Phases, they symbolize the triumph of human dignity, even if we only realize it during the full moon.
