Dead Howling Review: The Zombie Apocalypse Needed a Werewolf, Apparently

By Devin Smock | More Horror

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

The zombie genre has been picked clean, eaten, brought back to life and picked clean again. I say that as somebody who has directed a zombie film. I am part of the problem.

If you are going back into that world now, you need to bring something with you. Director John V. Soto and co-writer James Pickering brought a werewolf. Fair enough. At least nobody can accuse Dead Howling of being afraid of a big swing.

The opening has some of the compressed panic of Zack Snyder’s 2004 Dawn of the Dead, only without Johnny Cash arriving to carry us through the end of the world. Then I realized we were in Australia and became a little more interested. Western Australia gives the movie some space, rough country and the suggestion that danger could come from anywhere.

Cinematographer David Le May also plays with aberrations, smears and bent light around parts of the image. I could not always tell whether I was looking at something created in the lens, through filtration or later in post. I am also not sure every instance works. Still, somebody was making a choice. I will take an imperfect visual idea over the bland, scrubbed-clean frame that too many lower-budget horror movies settle for.

Temuera Morrison appears as Uncle Tony, driving teenage siblings Megan and Billy toward a rumored safe haven called Sanctuary. Morrison brings an immediate sense of authority because he is Temuera Morrison, but his appearance is brief. Very brief. Tony gets surrounded by zombies in an open area with the speed and convenience of people appearing around a birthday cake after the lights come back on. How did that many of them get that close without anyone seeing them? Who fucking knows. Uncle Tony gone.

Megan and Billy are saved by Carter, played by Joel Jackson, a former scientist wandering the ruins, drinking whatever liquor has not already been looted and killing the undead. He is also carrying enough guilt over his dead wife and child for several post-apocalyptic protagonists. Then he injects himself with a serum and turns into a werewolf.

Oh. Dead Howling. There it is.

Carter developed the serum while trying to find an answer to the zombie plague. The explanation gets into artificial intelligence helping produce the formula, because zombies and a werewolf apparently did not have enough going on. The kids are understandably confused. One of them asks how any of this is possible, but there are walking corpses outside trying to eat everyone. At this point, girl, the scientific rules have loosened a little.

The strange thing is that the werewolf reveal should change the entire chemistry of the movie. For the most part, it does not. Dead Howling goes right back to being a familiar zombie road story. Carter reluctantly agrees to take Megan and Billy toward Sanctuary. They travel, hide, search for supplies, meet dangerous survivors and gradually become a replacement family. Every so often Carter uses his injectable monster upgrade and the movie remembers the wild idea printed on the box.

That is the central frustration. The premise is ridiculous, but ridiculous is not the problem. Horror has earned the right to be ridiculous. The problem is that Soto introduces a werewolf into the zombie apocalypse and then surrounds him with most of the same story beats we have watched for the last twenty years. The film takes the wildest part of itself seriously without building enough mythology, humor or emotional weight around it to make the two monster traditions feel like they belong in the same world. Sometimes it feels less like a hybrid and more like a werewolf wandered onto the wrong set.

Jackson is the best argument for staying with it. Carter is grim and damaged because the screenplay requires it, but Jackson gives him enough dry, casual humor to keep him from becoming another growling apocalypse dad. His nonchalant conversation about transforming, ripping through his shirts and dealing with the practical inconvenience of being a wolf is probably the best material in the movie. It is one of the few moments when Dead Howling recognizes exactly how strange its own premise is and has some fun with it.

Téa Heathcote-Marks and Riley Stiles are generally believable as Megan and Billy, although the screenplay too often turns them into delivery systems for questions and exposition. They wonder about a thing, discuss the thing and then ask Carter to explain the thing we have already been watching. The developing bond among the three actors works better when the movie lets behavior do the talking. Carter’s harsh survival lesson in a gymnasium, where he forces the siblings to face the undead rather than remain helpless behind him, tells us more about all three characters than another conversation about trust ever could.

Ryan Kwanten eventually enters as Corporal Reynolds, part of a military group offering the kind of shelter that anyone who has ever watched an apocalypse movie knows not to trust. Kwanten adds some needed energy, and the encounter gives the movie another threat besides the undead. It is also the usual reminder that living people can be just as dangerous as the monsters. Fair enough, but George Romero was making that point before most of this cast was born. Putting a werewolf in the scene does not make the lesson new.

The creature work has its moments. The zombies look decent enough for the scale of the production, and the practical werewolf is best when it is allowed to occupy the frame and tear into something. The film wisely builds toward the larger displays of Carter’s wolf form, but that restraint also creates a problem. A movie sold around a werewolf fighting zombies spends a lot of time with a man in a black shirt walking through a standard wasteland. I understand that a convincing practical creature costs time and money. I also understand why somebody who came for the monster fight might feel a little shortchanged.

Budget is not the excuse for every problem anyway. Geography costs nothing. Uncle Tony’s death is the first example, but it continues whenever characters become surrounded because the scene needs them to be surrounded, whether the space supports it or not.

Several attacks are underexposed and cut so quickly that the action stops being frantic and becomes unreadable. Horror filmmakers at every budget level do this. Shake the camera, drop the exposure, cut every half second and hope confusion feels like panic. It does not. It feels like somebody is trying to give me a seizure while I figure out who is biting whom.

There are smaller ideas I enjoyed. Carter’s collection of liquor makes perfect sense for the end of civilization, and a little hint hidden in one of the labels is a nice touch. The Australian locations keep an otherwise generic apocalypse from becoming completely anonymous, even if the movie could have used more of their specific character. Most importantly, the filmmakers clearly tried to make something larger than the budget. I will always have more patience for that than I will for a movie that never risks looking foolish because it never risks anything.

The final stretch brings the group to Perth and reveals that Sanctuary is another dead promise, its message left playing after the people behind it have gone. It is not much of a surprise. The supposedly safe place in a zombie movie is almost never safe. Carter makes his final stand when the evolved undead close in, Megan is bitten and he uses the serum on her. Carter dies, Megan becomes the next werewolf and she leaves with Billy. The ending follows through on the serum as more than Carter’s private burden, but it also feels like the movie handing its best idea to a possible next chapter just as this one ends.

There is a version of Dead Howling that goes harder into the pulp of its premise. There is another version that slows down and really digs into Carter creating a cure that turned him into something else, then finding two kids who give him a reason to use it. Either one might have worked. This version sits awkwardly between them, too sincere to become a full monster mash and too familiar to become a strong character drama.

Dead Howling is not entirely bad. Jackson is good, the young actors hold their own, some of the visual experiments are interesting and the practical effects show real effort. The movie is ambitious, and ambition counts. It just does not erase murky action, exposition-heavy dialogue, uneven staging or a story that remains strangely ordinary after introducing a zombie-killing werewolf.

I admire the swing. I just wish the movie had howled a little louder.

5.7/10

Dead Howling opened in Australian cinemas on October 30, 2026, and was released in the United Kingdom on digital, Blu-ray and DVD on November 2. A United States release date had not been announced at the time of publication.

A screener of Dead Howling was provided for review purposes.