Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Laura Donnelly, Gael García Bernal, Harriet Sansom Harris, Kirk R. Thatcher, Eugenie Bondurant, Leonardo Nam, Daniel J. Watts, Al Hamacher, Carey Jones, David Silverman, Rick D. Wasserman, Richard Dixon, Jeffrey Ford, Erik Beck.
It is not all light and distraction that Marvel has to offer, there is also the darkness, the sombre and the toned down demanding an equal billing with the often interpretated versions of heroic endeavour.
Despite the courage shown by the death of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, of the madness in the face of dual grief exhibited by Wanda Maximoff, portrayed with superb skill by Elizabeth Olsen, the MCU, has not really delivered on the darker side as yet of monsters within, of promoting the monochrome which carries a greater weight visually, especially when immersed into the realm of Halloween.
The special, the one-off surprise by any franchise, is one to savour, and occasionally the result is one that howls cinematic beauty, that allows the belief of the sombre to carry through unhindered and with charm.
For Marvel and the MCU, the chance to finally shake loose and let demons run, comes not from the likes of Sony’s Morbius, but from within its own roster of additional characters, the ones perhaps thought of also rans by the greater readership, but which have their own fanbase, and perhaps none stand out more than Man-Thing, and Jack Russell, otherwise known as Werewolf By Night.
The dedicated Marvel comic fan of old will remember Jack Russell in the days before the repeal of the Comic Code Authority regulation that forbade images of lycanthropes to be depicted in publications that could influence children unduly; the politics of this decision is one that rankles many even since Marvel walked away from the authority in the early part of this century, and yet it is a decision that was absolutely correct, and one that has led to the composed and scintillating black and white film written by Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron, and directed by Michael Giacchino.
The sense of prohibition, as the CCA demanded, is dissected from within, the ghoulishness is given humour, the excessive use of ritual and slaughter is artistically handled, and the interaction between alleged good and supposed evil is subverted to the point where the original instigator of the CCA would have been spinning in their uptight grave.
Censorship for the sake of supressing artistic pursuit is never to be trusted, an evil that goes beyond editing, and has more in common with McCarthyism than many will admit; and one that if still existed would see one shots such as Werewolf By Night dismissed out of hand, and which thankfully is not the case in one of the most important developments in MCU history.
A one off maybe…but one that leaves a tremendous impact on the viewer, and a glorious addition to the MCU. Ian D. Hall