Title: Lunar Pursuit (2024)

Summary: Numerous nights of endless killings lead to an unexpected investigation.

Notes: The description box says this was all “written, shot, and edited within 48 hours”. Were these consecutive hours or what? Details, people!

Initial Thoughts

Hi. We’re back again so soon because it is WING’S BIRTHDAY MONTH and during good years (i.e. I have the time and something to watch) I find a little something to recap for a birthday gift. What better gift than werewolves for Wing? [Wing: I am, as always, utterly touched and delighted, especially because it’s an indie short film. We need more werewolf indie short films! (We need more werewolves in general.)]

[Wing: Note, though my birthday isn’t until later in the month, I’ve scheduled this for the full moon. Happy Wolf Moon!]

While this is not as involved as the year we did Ginger Snaps (2000) I somehow, somewhere, stumbled upon this tiny little college student film project and thought, hey, therewolves! What better way to celebrate the Wolf Moon. (Also, TL;DR I injured myself quite substantially falling on stairs in December and being confined to sitting around a lot while healing, this film project was just long enough that I could sit through it for a quick recap without issue.)

The short film is entitled Lunar Pursuit and can be found on the tubes of You. Please feel free to give it a watch, as I’m sure they could use the views. It seems like they’ve made quite a few other short film projects, though I haven’t watched any of them.

And with that, happy birthday, Wing!

Recap

“Darkroom Entertainment Presents”, okay. Ah, this is a “practice 48” film, which apparently means you do everything within 48 hours. I’m not familiar with this concept in independent film making, being that I haven’t remotely done any film work since… high school? No, wait, I went to fucking art college, so yeah, that was… too many years ago to admit. I don’t really count making short reels or TikToks as substantial video work (at least in my case; others put hella effort into theirs) so I would be very curious how my video/film teacher would have used the 48 hour idea. He probably did during the last years of his teaching career. That would be very like him. [Wing: I’ve seen the 48 hour practice in a lot of different arts areas, especially in indie comics, though I’ve never run into a werewolf film coming out of it. This did make me want to try filming something myself, even though that was never my genre of art.]

As close as we got was an assignment that said we were to film the events of one day. Mine included two teenage boys and I (also a teenager) getting stuck in a parking lot of a rival high school with a flat tire and needing a key to unlock the hubcap, which no one could find, so we just filmed us screaming at the tire while TOOL blasted on the stereo. It was… surreal.

ANYWAY. Back on to the (short) film at hand. On screen a list pops up: a prop, a line of dialogue, and a genre. I’m not going to say what they are; watch the video yourself. Finally, the title arrives on screen: “Lunar Pursuit”.

We open on a man reviewing fragmented newspaper articles about killings. One banner headline reads ”suspected werewolf”. The v/o talks about various victims – one “donating” her blood to a shower drain. That’s a really creepy but interesting take. [Wing: It’s a bit of an overwrought description but incredibly apt for the noir style, and also, I loved it.] The man begins to type on a typewriter. We are told there were seven bloody murders before everything stopped.

The investigator states it’s his job to figure out what happened between the 29th and 31st of October. [Wing: Hunters Moon!] He contemplates the newspaper clippings again, before telling the audience the in-person interviews were “less than satisfactory”. Cue a dude wearing an actual tinfoil hat walking into the room and sitting down. [Wing: The tinfoil hat killed me. A++ level of conspiracy-in-movies ridiculousness there.]

He immediately pops off spouting a mix of conspiracy theories and religious fundamentalism. Next is a woman holding a crocheted scarf, her voice quavering as she tells the investigator her son was a good boy and it was almost his half birthday. A third interviewee, a man, just moans and beats his fist upon the desk top.

We continue to see the three, cycling through their recounting of events. The woman wrapping the scarf around her eyes, the tinfoil hat guy speaking of big teeth, hair, and being upset, the other dude still not speaking actual words. All three are cycling through some sort of breakdown from the trauma.

A fourth man appears, throwing back the hood of his sweatshirt. “It was me. The killings, it was me.” Static electricity has poofed his hair to stand on end in a weird halo. The investigator doesn’t seem impressed. Dude insists he has “teef like a erewolf”, sticking his fingers in his mouth and pulling back his lips. He is distraught. The investigator asks if he’s here to turn himself in? No, dude wants “this thing out of me.” [Wing: Really good use of wanting to tear the beast out of yourself, remove this monstrous thing that is changing you. I also particularly like it when the question is addressed, if you remove something like that (and I love the werewolf as metaphor for bipolar myself), are you still you? How much of you is created by dealing with, surviving, fighting to control, this thing within you?]

The investigator asks if the dude has experienced other symptoms of being a werewolf: a distortion of time/memories, seeing “strange things in the dark” that no one else sees, [Wing: Love this as a bit of werewolf lore.] and a craving for raw meat. Dude says for sure two of the things but not the meat. Investigator says then the memory distortion is in full effect and they’ll have to do a test.

(I am going to complain right now that the voice recording of the investigator is so low and distorted that you can barely fucking hear him. This is very annoying, when everyone else is clearly recorded and audible. This is kind of a travesty to an otherwise decent production.) [Wing: Interestingly, I had the opposite problem with it. I wonder if their upload to YouTube is having issues. I could hear the investigator fine, but the interviewees are almost unintelligible (and there is no CC available). I’m relying on a combo of reading lips, using headphones, and your recap, so thanks!]

Investigator says supernaturals, werewolves in particular, want one thing. (Oh, do tell.) He reaches into his coat and pulls out what is (obviously not) a bloodied, used tampon. (Remember when I said there was a suggested object?)

Firstly: Dude. You probably shouldn’t keep that in your coat without, I dunno, putting it in a plastic bag? Secondly: Now I am fucking suspicious of the investigator, because of said used tampon just hanging out in his fucking coat pocket. [Wing: Right? And also, the werewolves can have all the pain that comes with my period. They’re welcome to it.]

He finishes the whole part about what supernaturals, specifically werewolves, wanting as being human blood. (I am not even going to start about menstrual blood because, for reasons, I am going to assume that the crime scene techs or detectives or whomever decided to just grab what was to hand, which happened to be a tampon, to collect actual human blood. Because I AM SUSPICIOUS OF THE INVESTIGATOR NOW. Also somewhere in that weird sentence is a whole other story that could be very interesting to write.) [Wing: It’s always interesting to me when a story uses menstrual blood as the trigger for whatever monstrous thing is happening, a la Pitch Black. Can’t quite be bandaged like a wound, can’t be intentionally controlled by the body, even the products we have available (including tampons) aren’t perfect at hiding it away. Add that to creatures drawn to blood, creatures who have enhanced senses, and you have a hunt.]

The suspected werewolf is immediately all where the fuck did you get that [Wing: I mean…] but the investigator says something I cannot understand but assume is challenging the dude to reach for it. Dude goes for it but there is a fight, and the investigator punches him out.

The screen goes dark.

We are POV of the self-ID’d werewolf suspect tied to a chair, wrists wrapped in tape, and clearly by the muffled sounds, he has been gagged. [Wing: Fucking first person shaky cam.] The only light is a circle that floods over the top of the chair, illuminating a pair of shoes that come into frame. The investigator appears and ONCE AGAIN THE FUCKING AUDIO IS USELESS. My kingdom for decent audio, why does this keep happening, it ruins everything. Something is said about not taking credit? But getting the help needed?

And, with that, the investigator attacks the person in the chair with an exaggerated snarl enhanced by sound effects, and I was right. The screen goes black as we hear blood splashing and the person perishing.

Final Thoughts

For a short film – it has a grand run time of 4:49 – this isn’t bad. Without screaming about the terrible audio for the main character, which makes it decidedly HARD to understand most of the film, the plot as a whole has some interesting ideas. I think that line about the blood in the shower is gonna stick in my brain for a while.

I like stuff like this. It reminds me of someone giving a word or a sentence and someone else writing a short piece of fiction using it. (Which I have done many, many, many times in my life; just ask Wing. [Wing: I miss those days! For all of us, that sort of prompting was good fun and so much delightful writing came out of it.]) 48 hours turnaround on a video project is much more feasible these days due to technology. It took me weeks to finish my first major project because I had to use VHS tapes and a very old editor (which kept demagnetizing my VHS tapes’ audio) to edit it. Talk about stress. I can only imagine how much easier digital is, even though I’m sure it has its own issues and quirks. [Wing: Dove used to make excellent fanvids, and I wish she had time to do them now, because the way technology has improved, I cannot even imagine the glory she would create.]

I wish I could remember where I found this. It was probably Twitter… It feels like I found it there by accident. No idea. It was months ago and stuff has happened since then. As a fun little werewolf-themed project, I give it a solid B+.

[Wing: This was so much fun! Thank you for finding it, and for surprising me with the recap, and for being a delightful friend all these years later.]