Marvel
While most other streaming series could be improved with fewer episodes, Marvel takes the opposite tack with Werewolf by Night, a standalone Halloween-themed event that clocks in at less than an hour, even though it probably would have benefited from running twice as long. A throwback to classic Universal monster movies, this black-and-white small-screen special—hitting Disney+ on Oct. 7—has a clever conceit, chilly atmosphere, and droll sense of humor that suggests it might have worked quite well as a full-length feature. In its present form, though, it remains a bite-size treat that MCU diehards will find difficult to resist.
The behind-the-camera debut of award-winning blockbuster film and television composer Michael Giacchino, Werewolf by Night spends mere moments laying out the lore of its corner of the Marvel universe, explaining that the planet’s “darkness” is home to both monsters and those who hunt them. Central to the latter’s mission is the Bloodstone, an ancient weapon that has the power to destroy even the most fearsome creature, and it’s now up for grabs since its most recent owner, Ulysses Bloodstone, has died. His memorial is the setting for a gathering of global monster hunters eager to both pay their respects and to claim the relic as their own. Among them is Jack Russell (Gael Garcia Bernal), who shows up decked out in a swanky black suit and with dark, sallow eyes and strange ritualistic lines on his face, which he tells another attendee are his means of honoring his ancestors.
How Jack earned himself an invitation to this shindig is left conspicuously unexplained by Werewolf by Night, but he nevertheless makes himself comfortable in the grand chamber where everyone congregates for the forthcoming ceremony. That’s overseen by Verusa (Harriet Sansom Harris), Ulysses’ devoted widow, who’s not very pleased by news that the evening’s rite has been crashed by Ulysses’ daughter Elsa (Laura Donnelly), a young woman who apparently had no use for her father’s training and turned her back on assuming his mantle as her natural birthright. Once assembled, Jack and Elsa, along with four other formidable monster slayers, are treated to the strangest funeral imaginable, with Ulysses’ casket cranked open so his corpse can animatronically move while a recording of his voice plays—a puppeteer-style resurrection that’s just the right side of bizarre.