Teen Wolf Season 1
Starring: Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed, Dylan O’Brian, Holland Roden, Colton Haynes
Rating: 3/5
When they announced that Teen Wolf was going to be returning to our screens, it didn’t go down the best with the die-hard fans of the 1980s film. That’s quite a small club though. When it was announced the new TV show was going to take more than a few cues from fellow supernatural teen dramas like The Vampire Diaries and Twilight, the knives started coming out.
The good news is that Teen Wolf is nowhere near as bad as it could and probably should have been. In actual fact, it’s rather enjoyable.
Teen Wolf sees us follow Scott McCall, a socially awkward teen who’s desperate to get on the school’s champion lacrosse team. Along with his good buddy Styles, the two aren’t the height of popularity, until a terrifying animal attack changes everything for Scott.
Stronger, faster and able to heal instantly, Scott soon discovers he’s in fact a werewolf, a terrifying concept for any rational teenager to handle. Now, he must gain control over his new found power, as well as navigate the usual choppy waters of high school and try and gain the affections of beautiful new girl Allison.
The show’s in its element when it’s either accepting the ridiculousness of the situation or going completely full throttle on the show’s new horror angle. When side character and comedy relief Styles is cracking wise about the whole werewolf issue, the show feels good. The trouble is that there’s just not quite enough of it.
It’s not helped by characters that, as a whole, only seem to detract from the overall experience. While Styles and Allison make for interesting characters you want to follow, Scott is a sub-par protagonist. Wild mood swings and tendency to act like a total idiot at random leave you alternating between routing for and against him. Support players Lydia and Jackson on the other hand are downright terrible; sucking the life and fun out of nearly every scene they’re in.
While the comparisons to Twilight have been made, Teen Wolf thankfully doesn’t waste as much time moping, brooding and overall just being downbeat. The couple of periods when this melancholy sets in though drag horrifically and the attempts at the pre-requisite love-triangles work out poorly as well, completely unneeded and just muddy the waters.
These are simply blemishes though on a quite admirable piece of horror TV. The episodes where the scares are meant to lie are pretty imposing, all dark corridors, mysterious noises, brutal surprises and a great sense of menace.
The trouble is that despite the good atmosphere work, the werewolf designs and sometimes shoddy special effects just make most of the menacing posturing simply look ridiculous.
Despite this though, the show definitely picks up towards the end of the series though, losing most of the convoluted subplots and simplifying it down to an enjoyable, surprisingly dark endgame. Definitely benefitting from a shorter episode run, Teen Wolf makes for an unexpectedly good time, keeping a great lick of speed throughout.
While having clear problems that keep it from being on the same level as fellow super-natural shows True Blood, Buffy or Supernatural, Teen Wolf certainly isn’t the runt of pack.
Teen Wolf Season 1 is available on DVD
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith