Hulu’s (formerly monthly) anthology series with Blumhouse ends its second season howling at the moon.

Spoilers ahead...

2.12 “Blood Moon”: When Esme (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and her ten-year-old son, Luna (Yonas Kibreab), move to a small desert town looking for a fresh start they attract all the wrong kinds of attention. As the locals begin to probe, Esme must battle to protect her son and a terrifying secret before the next full moon threatens their very existence.

TERRY

I think it’s fair to say that Into the Dark has been a hit or miss series, Joe. For every “All That We Destroy”, there’s a “I’m Just Fucking With You.” Uneven doesn’t begin to explain it and I’ll be honest when I heard the season two finale was going to be a werewolf film...well, I was worried. The series hasn’t had the best special effects and whenever it focuses on specific genre stories, it tends to fall a little flat.

But I have to say that “Blood Moon” surprised me by putting the emphasis on the two lead characters and exploring a parent’s devotion to their child’s safety.

“Blood Moon” starts with a cold open close-up of Esme, her exhausted face bloodied. As the camera pulls back we see she’s holding a pump-action shotgun and her white shirt is torn and bloodied. Something continues to pound against something unseen and then it’s morning and a baby begins crying. Esme walks over to a small locked cell where her baby, Luna, is bawling his eyes out. And as she carries him down the stairs, we see a dead, bloody body lying among pillow feathers.

Cut to a few years later and Luna is now a haunted ten year old boy who just wants to be like any other child his age. But Esme (now calling herself Sarah) keeps him under close eye as they move from state to state, trying to keep a step ahead of whatever disasters they’ve left behind. In this new town, she’s hoping to start a new life, but first she has to buy a house with a basement and enough metal to create a large cell to keep Luna in every full moon.

Then she gets a job as a bartender/waitress at the local bar and immediately tells the owner Sam (Joshua Dov) that she needs the 21st off. No exceptions. On the calendar in her house, she’s circled the 21st in red marker. It becomes a continuing refrain throughout “Blood Moon,” a nice visual marker of the time spent in their new home, as well as a continual reminder that every 30 days, Luna turns into a bloodthirsty wolf.

What follows is a slow and measured exploration of the lengths Esme goes through to keep her son safe from a world that would fear, hunt and kill him. Interspersed through the normal everyday actions the two go through are flashbacks that explore her budding relationship with her boyfriend-turned-fiance (Jack Yang) that fill in some of the missing context about Luna’s past.

Since the boyfriend died when Luna was a baby, the boy asks a lot of emotional questions, such as whether his dad read to him the way Esme does. Eventually, he asks what happened to his father and the way Megalyn Echikunwoke sells her answer is heart-breaking.

It’s a good thing “Blood Moon” has Echikunwoke and Yonas Kibreab as its two main cast members because, honestly, not a whole lot happens in this film. It feels like a slice-of-life drama about a mother living with a lycanthrope child. Director Emma Tammi (The Wind and previous Into the Dark entry “Delivered”) manages to pull exceptional performances from the two of them, grounding the supernatural narrative in realism, but the script by Adam Mason & Simon Boyes is a bit too long in the tooth to sustain a feature length film.

That said, it’s easily one of the more successful entries in Into the Dark because it doesn’t feel bloated, despite its very slow and measured pace.

It’s also hard to talk about this movie without mentioning the phenomenal (and better) Good Manners because “Blood Moon” sometimes feels like the last half of that film, drawn out to feature length. Both films deal with a woman caring for a person who is a werewolf and “Blood Moon” feels like an obvious homage to the tone and themes the second half of Good Manners explored.

It makes it hard to completely recommend “Blood Moon” when audiences are better served watching that superior film...and yet there’s a lot here to love. In particular, DOP Lyn Moncrief captures the desert, rural town with the lawless ruthlessness of Westerns. It also brings to mind Tammi’s work in the prairie horror The Wind, modernizing the setting while continuing to focus on a woman’s plight, alone against the world.

Complementing this is a stunning score by Jay Wadley that splices a Western feel with Spanish guitars and a tone that feels reminiscent of the work Gustavo Santaolalla created for The Last of Us. The haunting melody played mostly through a lonely guitar creates an oppressive and haunting mood that gives “Blood Moon” an incredibly tragic texture.

For me, though, it all starts to unravel when the film remembers it is a piece of genre fiction and tips its hand to the townsfolk. The way Luna’s werewolf nature is revealed to Sam also feels perfunctory and something of a necessity rather than a natural progression.

But I’m curious about your thoughts on this season (series?) finale? Did the story of a mother and her son work for you? Was the film too slow for you or were you enjoying the slice-of-life drama? What did you think of Esme’s friendship with Miguel (Marco Rodriguez), the shopkeeper who gave her a much needed hand? Were you annoyed or happy that the film resisted showing us a true werewolf transformation? And did the finale work for you?

JOE

Wow Terry, it’s a bit surreal to consider that this may be the end of the road for Into The Dark. While the series has produced more misses than hits for me, they’ve also provided an outlet for new and exciting horror voices to cut their teeth or more established directors to quickly produce new work (or both).

I’ll confess that the rushed turnaround and low budgets have made for quite a few projects with more promise than execution, but Into The Dark has undeniably contributed an alternative modality for horror fans to engage and consume content (monthly, on their TV at home before the pandemic mandated it). In short: we may quibble with the quality of the finished product, but I’ve always been happy to see a new installment come out.

If this is the end of the series, Blood Moon is a strong text to go out on. I agree that it’s arguably one of the least genre-specific entries of the series, though I would also argue that a large part of the reason it is such a compelling film. As you said, Terry, when Blood Moon actually has to address the werewolf that’s been lurking on the edges of the narrative, that’s when the film starts to falter.

Before we go further, it’s important to acknowledge the absolutely vital comparison that you made to Brazilian film Good Manners. Outside of Ginger Snaps, that film is one of the single most quintessential contemporary werewolf properties, and its unabashed queerness makes it essential viewing. I was so, so pleased to see you reference it.

The comparison is apt, though, because both texts are so exceedingly preoccupied with the human drama at the center of their nightmarish premise. The strained relationship between two lovers in Good Manners is replaced here for a protective mother and her young son, but the central conflict in both is not that there’s a werewolf afoot, but rather how do you live and love when your everyday existence is threatened by the exposure of this secret?

It’s meaty stuff (and not just because of the many cows and the packages of meat that Esme must procure for her burgeoning young lycanthrope).

My enthusiasm for Blood Moon may also be biased because I’ve been a fan of Echikunwoke for quite some time. I first saw her as the progeny from hell in The 4400 TV series and while that character suuuuucked, the actress’ capacity for turning a one-note villain into a fascinating character study was really impressive.

The reality is that, by sheer virtue of budgetary limitations, this is Esme’s film. That could be a hindrance, but here it’s an asset thanks to Echikunwoke’s performance. Esme is an actor’s dream role: she’s a three dimensional character who is front and center for the entire story. And Echikunwoke completely anchors this property without falling prey to the same pitfalls that stilted Tammi’s previous Into The Dark entry, Delivered, where a similarly small and intimate scope wound up producing a dull and stilted narrative.

I particularly loved how Echikunwoke fluctuates her performance to highlight the difference between Esme in the flashbacks (warm, flirty, open) and the present day iteration of the character (still affectionate to Luna, but guarded, firm and no nonsense). This change makes sense not only because of the life Esme has lived on the road, but also because of her status as a single woman.

Blood Moon is undisputably a feminist text in the way “Sarah” is continually harassed by men. This runs the gamut from icky Sheriff Townes (Gareth Williams) and Deputy Hammond (Brian R. Norris) to the more “innocuous” refusal by her boss Sam to accept her repeated rejection of his sexual advances. Mason & Boyes’ script is relatively obvious in how it constructs these real life realities for women, but Blood Moon isn’t as heavy handed as they could have been. Unfortunately this makes the last half of the film all the more disappointing when the narrative (not unexpectedly) veers into pulpier territory.

It was inevitable that Esme and Luna’s secret would come out and that the abusive police would be involved. What didn’t work well was Sam’s death: it is too abrupt and could have been used to instigate a climax set within the house. Instead this development is delayed in favour of a protracted and underwhelming police station set piece that lays bare the production’s budgetary restrictions.

While Luna’s reveal as a werewolf (and the lack of a transformation scene) will undoubtedly be disappointing to some, I prefer the use of a real wolf rather than a dodgy CGI creation (in this capacity Blood Moon is an improvement over Good Manners).

Overall, though, this finale is just bland and, in some ways, feels like a betrayal of the more interesting character work that dominates the first half of the film. I appreciate that Blood Moon is, at its core, a horror film, but it definitely works better as a drama with genre elements.

The quick and unrealistic wrap-up, particularly Miguel’s involvement, is similarly disappointing. While I greatly appreciated that there was never an insinuation of romance between Miguel and Esme, his friendship and her stubborn refusal to confide in another adult merited a greater exploration. As it stands the only part of the last act that truly works is the suggestion that Esme and Luna have survived to try again, under new pseudonyms, in another town.

With that, we’ve reached the end of Blood Moon and (possibly) Into The Dark, Terry.

I’m giving this entry a B-. What about you?

TERRY

I agree with pretty much everything you said, Joe. If this is the last Into the Dark episode, it went out on a high note. It’s the most cohesive and intriguing film to come out of the series in awhile, mostly thanks to Echikunwoke’s performance and Tammi’s direction. It used its small budget to great effect and side-stepped issues that have plagued the series by not being too ambitious in what it showed. “Blood Moon” is what I would have liked to see more of, from Into the Dark and I’m glad it returned for two episodes, if only so we could end on this really nice note.

I give this entry a B-, as well.