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Teen Wolf Season 1 Review


Teen Wolf Season 1
Studio: MTV
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Format: DVD
Release Date: 16 May, 2012
Price: $34.98 – Available Here

Overview

Based on the 1985 Michael J Fox movie, Teen Wolf, the MTV series holds barely any similarities with its original apart from the whole teenage werewolf thing. Departing from the vampire craze that has been around for teenage fiction, TV and film, Teen Wolf focuses on the werewolf side of things. And there is definitely no sparkling involved.

Story

Teen Wolf manages to be a good mix of teen angst, humour, and hormones. And a healthy does of horror mixed in there for good measure. The story traverses the whole dealing with being a teenager, high school, girls, oh and being a newly turned werewolf. As can be expected from MTV, the actors are all crazy attractive and there isn’t an unattractive one among the lot.

Teen Wolf certainly fits into the teenage TV show type, though it avoids the more annoying stereotype of teenage shows where the characters end up jumping from one relationship to another. In fact, it’s probably the least annoying of the teenage shows in that regards.

The show has a good ensemble of characters, with Stiles being a great character that really brings humour and lightens up the mood. If it hadn’t been for him then the show would otherwise be fairly dark and dramatic with the main character, Scott’s, teen and wolf angst.

The dynamics between all the characters are interesting, and a big part of what I like about the show. They’re all quite likeable, but in their own flawed ways. Even the most annoying character becomes one that I liked quite a lot in the end. The characters all develop a depth and interesting dimensions that you don’t always see in all the members of an ensemble cast.

While the show does start of slow in the first couple of episodes, once it gains steam through the middle part of the season, it gets really interesting and you’ll find yourself getting more and more dragged into the story line. The action also steps it up a notch as the storyline ramps up and gets into the meat of the story’s climax. While it’s not all out action like you may be used to seeing in some shows, and the suspense sometimes leaves something to be desired, it is still quite an interesting story and worth putting up with the less well delivered moments.

Visuals

The special effects leave something to be desired, for sure. That is the one big downfall for the show, and something that could have resulted in the horror and suspenseful moments holding more weight rather than just ending up being kind of humorous looking and distracting entirely from the show. Personally I just didn’t find a lot of things as scary as what they were trying to portray. And it was sort of awkward to be able to tell that it was meant to be a scary moment, but wasn’t it at all. If they could just get better special effects the quality of the show would lift so much more, and be far more involving without being distracted and wanting to laugh.

Not just the quality of the visual effects, but the general look of the werewolves are questionable, and not really all that scary. In this way it probably would’ve been good for the show to move away from the original movie, and more towards a more wolfish look. While it definitely could have been done better, and it does result in a little bit of cringing, I must note that the story is interesting enough to be enough of a reason to keep watching.

Audio

The soundtrack for the show is great, which isn’t a surprise given that it is an MTV show. The music ranges between your standard alternative stuff, to some more interesting music that I, personally, think was quite good. It’s always nice to hear music that isn’t part of the mainstream on shows, but is still so damn catchy that you end up wanting to get a copy when you hear it.

Apart from the music, the soundtrack and sound effects are fairly standard, and this adds to the awkwardness when it makes it clear that it is meant to be a scary moment and it just doesn’t live up to it.

Overall

Teen Wolf is an interesting show, with some great characters that started off as stereotypes but have been developed to the point that they are all quite enjoyable to watch on the screen. While the special effects and attempts at CGI leave something to be desired, as long as you can ignore this fault, it is a good show and certainly something that you can get addicted to.

8-5-capsules-out-of-10

Jessica Barabas-Bui
Jessica Barabas-Bui
BRB, playing games.