An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at the Hulu 2021 Original, Blood Moon
Blood Moon is a part of Hulu’s Into the Dark series wherein they released a movie a month based on a holiday/event in that month.
After moving to a new town, a mother must do whatever she can to prevent her son’s secret from endangering everyone including herself.
Related Article: Down (2019) Explained
Is it Scary?
Like the previous Into the Dark film I reviewed, Down, Blood Moon is not scary. There’s maybe one jump scare in the whole movie and while there is some gore, it’s pretty rare and quick. Blood Moon focuses more on story as opposed to scares and it’s better for it.
Overall you won’t leave the movie scared unless you’re watching while you have a werewolf trapped in your basement.
Detailed Plot:
The movie opens with our main character Esme (played by Megalyn Echikunwoke) bloodied, standing by a door with a dead-eyed stare, and holding a shotgun. A short time later we hear a baby crying and Esme runs to a small concrete box, unlocks it, and pulls out a baby. As she leaves the house with the baby she walks past the feet of a dead person, though we don’t see who it is.
Title screen… and credits, been a while since I’ve seen some credits at the start of a movie. The credits play over several images of moons just in case you’ve forgotten that this is a movie about werewolves.
We cut to Esme watching some livestock and we realized it’s been several years since the baby is now an 8-10 year-old child named Luna (played by Yonas Kibreab). Incidentally, Luna means moon in a couple of languages so guess who the werewolf is. The two check out a house for sale in a small town and suspiciously Esme is more interested in what the basement looks like.
After agreeing to rent the house, Esme and Luna head to the local hardware store where they meet the owner Miguel (played by Marco Rodriguez). While making her purchase, Esme gives Miguel a list of items that she’ll need to be delivered. Although we don’t see what the items are, Miguel says it’s a big project and will take 3 days for delivery but it is pay-on-delivery.
While Miguel rings up the rest of her items, he asks for ID as she is buying an oxy-torch. Esme gives him a fake ID that shows her name as Sarah. There’s a bit of an awkward moment when the Sheriff’s deputy walks in and tries to hit on Esme but she rebuffs him. Weirdly Esme is trying to hide herself and Luna from him, but they just arrived in the town so I’m pretty sure they haven’t committed any crimes yet.
Later Esme meets the owner of the local diner/bar Sam (played by Joshua Dov) and applies for a job off the books. Sam agrees and tells her it will be four shifts a week. Esme’s only request is to have off the 21st of that month and Sam reluctantly agrees.
We flashback an indeterminate amount of time to where Esme, without Luna, walks into a bar and meets Joseph (played by Jack Yang). On her way to work, she’s gotten a flat tire and needs to borrow the phone. After she hangs up there’s some flirting between the two and Joseph offers to change her flat tire if she buys him a drink.
Back in the present Esme tells Sam she had a husband in the past but it didn’t work out. There’s a pretty good chance Joseph was that husband and also the owner of those dead feet from the start of the movie.
A couple of days later Miguel arrives at the house to deliver the steel and lumber Esme had ordered. Turns out she can’t pay him at the moment and he makes a comment about how she swindled him. Although part of the blame is on him since apparently, his pay-on-delivery offer was no questions asked. But, Miguel is a nice guy and allows her to pay it off in installments.
Miguel tells Esme about his granddaughter who would gladly want to make friends with Luna once school starts but Esme tells him Luna is homeschooled. It’s also pretty clear that Esme is extremely over-protective of Luna and that’s fair given his condition.
Honestly, Esme does a horrible job at not coming off suspicious especially when Miguel makes a joke that the steel he delivered could hold a lion and she barely fakes a laugh.
Later while Esme is at work, Sheriff Barlow (played by Gareth Williams) who is a real dick, aggressively hits on her. In response, she threatens to kill him which is probably not the best idea when you leave your underage son at home alone while you work and he happens to be a werewolf.
At the end of her shift, Sam pays Esme and reaches over to pull off a bobby pin on her jacket. Esme assumes he’s trying to touch her inappropriately and threatens to file a sexual harassment claim, though she apologizes when he explains he was just pulling off the pin she forgot.
The next day, while Esme is homeschooling Luna we see a flashback of the day Esme told Joseph she was pregnant. Joseph tells her there are things about him she doesn’t know but we don’t see him admit to her he’s a werewolf but it’s pretty clear that’s what was about to happen.
That night we see it’s June 20th which means Esme was homeschooling Luna on a Sunday. There’s no need to point this out except that it just seems unfair to me. Anyway, after tucking Luna in, Esme heads out to where she was watching the livestock at the beginning of the movie and kills a cow. Werewolf Luna gotta eat ya know?
It’s not clear if she packs up the whole cow into bags or just some pieces but she doesn’t do a good job at it. We cut to her driving and the bag in the back seat as a huge hole that clearly shows what’s inside. Right on cue, the cops pull her over and it’s the overly hostile Sheriff with his deputy.
The Sheriff recognizes her and it’s clear he didn’t have a real reason for pulling her over. After checking her paperwork he orders her out of the car and pats her down. Surprisingly they don’t see the cow parts in the back seat and buy her excuse that it’s recycling.
Morning arrives and Luna is already craving raw meat as he is caught staring at a pack in the fridge. Esme takes him downstairs into the cage she’s built and locks him. As Luna starts to cry out in pain Esme reads to him until he starts growling signaling that the transformation is starting.
Esme tells him she’ll be upstairs and heads outside. There, she sits on the porch with a tranquilizer gun in hand and falls asleep. Luckily they live in the middle of nowhere so no one is going to question why the new neighbor is sitting outside with a large gun for 12 hours while her son yells out in pain inside. The next morning Esme unlocks the cage and Luna is as good as new.
Two weeks later Esme is at work and Miguel stops by. She gives him a payment for the steel and lumbar and offers to pay for his drink. Miguel tells her he was raised by a single mother and offers to help her with whatever she needs. Sam then walks in and Miguel suggests that Esme give him a chance but she declines.
That night Esme arrives home and finds Luna is sick with a high fever. Cut to them in the Emergency Room at the hospital and where the doctor finds a piece of bone lodged in his mouth that has caused an infection.
Dr. Santa wants to run a blood test just to make sure the infection hasn’t traveled to Luna’s blood but Esme tries to decline the test. After the doctor leaves the room, Esme and Luna sneak out of the hospital.
Sometime later Esme realizes she won’t have enough to make the final payment to Miguel and asks Sam for more shifts. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any available but then asks why Esme is a waitress despite her ability to quote “obscure statutes regarding sexual harassment in the workplace”…. What?
All she said was she’d file a sexual harassment claim, that isn’t a statute and it certainly isn’t obscure. C’mon Sam you’re making yourself look dumb and I’m rooting for you here. Anyway, we find out that Esme used to work in law although we don’t get specifics.
Cut to a flashback of Joseph, a day after a transformation, asking Esme to marry him. She agrees and we see the ring he used is the same ring Esme has been wearing around her neck.
The following day Esme and Luna visit Miguel to drop off the final payment and Luna blurts out that Esme had to sell her ring for the money. Miguel says she didn’t have to do that and then tells her about his granddaughter’s birthday party. Luna wants to go but when Miguel says it’s on the 20th, Esme says he can’t go as it’s the same day as the next full moon.
Outside Luna yells at Esme for not letting him live his best life like he’s not some sort of werewolf and Esme agrees she has been overprotective. Though he won’t be able to go to the party, Esme agrees to think about signing him up for school.
On the 19th Sam calls Esme and asks her to pick up the lunch shift for the following day. Although she says no at first, she agrees… so shit is about to hit the fan. The next day, the day of the full moon, Esme leaves Luna in the morning and tells him she’ll be back by 3:30 so they can prepare for his transformation.
Luna then pulls out the party invitation and we cut to later with Esme arriving home to an empty house. Checking his bed she finds the invitation and realizes where he went.
At the party, Luna is staring off into the distance not looking too healthy but no one is paying him any mind. Suddenly a crazed Esme comes running and grabs him making a huge scene as she runs with him to the car.
As she speeds down the road, Luna starts to yell out in pain as we hear his bones scrunching and cracking. Again we don’t see any of the transformation except for his eyes going yellow but his transformation causes a window to break and makes Esme lose control of the truck. Crashing into a ditch, she loses consciousness and we cut to black.
Hours later she wakes up to find Luna missing and no sign of him anywhere. Esme drives back home grabs her tranquilizer gun and heads out into the night while calling out for Luna. Does it look like she’s out hunting her child? Absolutely.
As the sun rises, Esme returns home and finds a bloody Luna asleep on the front porch. Don’t worry it’s not his blood, and… that makes it better? Later, Luna questions what happened to his dad and Esme reveals during one of his transformations, he tried to attack her. She ended up killing him in self-defense and we get confirmation it was him dead at the start of the movie.
While watching the news, the two start packing up their belongings as they’re unsure what Luna did while transformed. Meanwhile, we see the sheriff and his deputy at a farm where a bunch of livestock has been slaughtered and ripped to pieces.
On the news, the Sheriff declares a mountain lion caused the damage which takes the heat off Esme and Luna so the two decide not to move.
For the next several months the two live without issue. There’s a scene with Miguel and Luna fixing Esme’s truck but nothing else of real interest happens. November rolls around and Esme has purchased some raw meat from the store instead of killing a cow since it’s too risky. Luna complains it’s not fresh enough and that it smells so I guess even werewolves locked in cages have standards.
The two head upstairs to take a nap and a few hours later Luna wakes up to someone knocking on the door. Instead of waking up his overprotective mom, he decides to just open the door himself. Luckily it’s just Sam who is dropping off Esme’s pay but has also brought her flowers as he planned on asking her out for dinner.
Luna tells him she’s sleeping but just as Sam is about to leave he gets a whiff of the raw meat coming from the basement. Thinking it’s a sewer issue and since he doesn’t know how to respect boundaries, Sam offers to head down to the basement and fix the problem. Luna calls out to his mom finally waking her up and she rushes down.
It’s too late though as Sam reaches the bottom of the basement and sees the cage along with the raw meat.
Sam heads upstairs and, in probably the biggest overreaction I’ve seen in a while, Esme knocks him backward with her shotgun causing him to fall down the stairs and die. She freaking killed Sam! Realizing what she did and who she did it too, Esme drags his corpse into the cage so Luna can… eat… him?
With no other choice, Esme tells Luna that after his transformation they’re going to leave town. A few hours later, Luna is locked in the cage and Esme is packing up their belongings when she gets a few more visitors; the Sheriff, and his deputy.
The Sheriff asks if she’s seen Sam and she tells him he stopped by to drop off her pay but that was it. Despite not having a warrant, the sheriff orders the deputy to search the home, and Esme tries to shut the door on them.
The sheriff pushes his way through and after Esme almost accidentally shoots him with her shotgun, he arrests her. Meanwhile, in the basement, the deputy finds Luna who hasn’t transformed yet.
A little bit later at the police station, Luna is with a deputy while Esme is being questioned by the sheriff. We find out that Esme is wanted in seven states and the FBI has been alerted. She tries to warn the sheriff he needs to lock Luna up in a cell but apparently he’s not into breaking more than one law a day.
Luna starts to transform and it does not go well for the station.
Esme grabs the deputy’s gun and walks out into the lobby where everyone is dead. I’m talking body parts and blood everywhere. It’s almost as if there was a werewolf loose in a candy store full of fresh meaty victims. Also where the hell did all these cops come from? In the entire movie, we’ve only seen the deputy and the sheriff and now there are like 10 dead cops.
Esme tries to run into a cell but is stopped by the sheriff who, by the way has been bitten in the shoulder, and instead of teaming up with Esme, he points a gun at her. Before he can shoot, he’s bitten and dragged off by Werewolf-Luna, though we don’t see it.
Esme runs to the cell but is unable to open it and seeing as she’s at a dead end, she prepares to shoot Werewolf-Luna who she hears approaching. As he gets closer she begs him not to make her shoot and tries to remind him who she is.
Ultimately she’s unable to shoot and we finally see the vicious and terrifying Werewolf that’s been easily ripping cattle and humans to shreds.
“Werewolf” Luna is totally cool with Esme and we cut to a little bit later with Esme driving off with Luna back to normal asleep in the passenger’s seat. As she drives we see a flashback to the aftermath of the police station where Esme has called Miguel for help and to bring her truck.
Miguel is shocked to see Luna is a “werewolf” but also very quickly cool with it; almost like he saw it coming since the kid’s name is Luna after all. He promises to tell the FBI he was asleep all night as they wouldn’t believe the truth anyway.
Before Esme leaves, Miguel gives her the ring she sold earlier in the movie and tells her he bought it back for her as it seemed important.
The film ends as Esme and Luna drive off into the sunrise.
Review:
Blood Moon was surprisingly good. I didn’t have high hopes for an Into the Dark entry because of the previous one I reviewed, Down, took so long to get to the point but Blood Moon doesn’t waste your time. It’s well acted, well paced, the dialogue doesn’t feel hammy, and it tells a pretty good story. That’s not to say there aren’t problems with the movie/TV episode.
The biggest problem Blood Moon has is that it feels too much like a pilot episode for a tv show following the characters. Sure, the Into the Dark series are TV movies but they should still attempt to tell a complete story.
Character arcs for almost every character feel incomplete and there’s no real overall resolution to the character’s problem. For example, Esma’s internal problem is that she’s too overprotective of Luna and while she lightens up a bit, there’s no real resolution. Same for Luna who is becoming irresponsible with his condition, there’s no real resolution or consequences for him.
We also learn things that are much bigger deals than what the character’s problems are in this movie; Esma killed her husband yet it has no real long-lasting effect on her. She’s also wanted by the FBI but that doesn’t really affect the movie and there’s no resolution to it by the end.
What makes this movie work as opposed to other movies I reviewed that felt like television pilots, example The Devil Below, is the overall premise. In Blood Moon the main characters have to keep moving to new states in order to try again, so this could very well be a contained episode of a procedural show where every week Esme and Luna arrive to a new town. The main thing is, the problems that start in this town are solved by the end so it’s satisfying.
Overall I recommend Blood Moon especially if you’re looking for a tame werewolf film and you don’t mind there being some loose ends that will never be tied up.
Related Article: The Devil Below (2021) Explained
Cast IMDB
Stuff to Ignore
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Metacritic – No Page