The Moon is Full, the Patience is Not
Late Phases is the kind of movie that makes you realize horror doesn’t always need a monster—sometimes, the real terror is watching a good idea die slowly over 90 minutes. Directed by Adrián García Bogliano, this werewolf drama thinks it’s delivering deep emotional commentary about aging, isolation, and courage. What it actually delivers is Gran Torino meets Teen Wolf, minus the charisma, fur quality, or functioning budget.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of listening to your cranky uncle describe his war stories while a guy in a Party City wolf mask occasionally growls in the background.
The Premise: Werewolves, Wheelchairs, and Wasted Potential
Nick Damici plays Ambrose McKinley, a blind Vietnam vet who moves into a retirement community—because apparently, no one in this man’s family has heard of therapy or pest control. Within 24 hours, his neighbor is mauled to death by something that’s either a werewolf or a particularly angry golden retriever. Ambrose, meanwhile, fights off the beast with a pistol and a lot of grumpy determination, only to lose his beloved seeing-eye dog, Shadow.
Now, losing the dog in a horror film is usually an emotional gut punch. Here, it’s the emotional high point, because it’s the last time the movie feels like it has a pulse. Shadow’s death scene has more pathos, weight, and urgency than anything Ambrose does afterward. If the Academy gave awards for “Best Acting by a Dog Corpse,” this film would’ve swept.
After that, we’re left with 80 minutes of Ambrose digging graves, squinting (metaphorically), and mumbling about full moons like he’s trapped in a geriatric CSI episode.
Nick Damici: Blind Fury, Limited Range
Nick Damici has a face like a granite countertop and the emotional range of one too. He’s made a career of playing no-nonsense tough guys, but Late Phases asks him to carry an entire film based on his ability to look intense while talking to thin air. And boy, does he talk.
He delivers lines like “I’ll be ready for the next full moon” with the energy of a man reading his grocery list. Sure, he’s supposed to be blind and stoic, but there’s a difference between restrained and embalmed. By the halfway point, you’re rooting for the werewolf just to liven things up.
Damici’s Ambrose is less a character and more an archetype carved from surplus Clint Eastwood grit: the veteran, the loner, the “I don’t need anyone’s help” guy. Unfortunately, he’s also the “I don’t need interesting dialogue” guy.
The Supporting Cast: The Golden Girls Meet the Grim Reaper
The supporting cast reads like a who’s who of “Wait, haven’t I seen them somewhere?” Tom Noonan plays a priest who delivers exposition like he’s narrating a bedtime story for insomniacs. Rutanya Alda, Erin Cummings, and Caitlin O’Heaney appear as the gossiping retirees next door, all of whom exist solely to provide Ambrose with targets for his gruff disdain.
Their early scenes have all the chemistry of a community theater production of Cocoon. They drink tea, they talk about faith, and they occasionally wander into frame just in time to be mauled by something covered in yak hair.
The standout here—if you can call it that—is Lance Guest as James, the asthmatic werewolf. Yes, you read that right. Our main monster wheezes like a broken accordion. Imagine American Werewolf in London if the beast stopped mid-rampage to use an inhaler.
The Monster Effects: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Let’s talk about the werewolves.
There are SyFy Channel original movies with more convincing creature designs. The monsters here look like what you’d get if someone tried to make a wolf suit out of recycled bath mats. When they attack, it’s less “terrifying supernatural predator” and more “angry Muppet with a toothache.”
Every transformation scene looks like a high school biology project gone wrong—rubber skin stretching, fur sprouting inconsistently, and snarling prosthetics that couldn’t scare a toddler. It’s not scary, but it is unintentionally hilarious. One transformation in particular looks like the poor actor is having a heat stroke inside a Halloween costume.
There’s supposed to be tension as Ambrose prepares for his final showdown, but once you see the werewolves, all you can think is: “These are the creatures that wiped out half the neighborhood? Did nobody try throwing a tennis ball?”
The Tone: Gran Torino Meets Goosebumps
Late Phases desperately wants to be taken seriously. It flirts with the idea of being a character study about loss, mortality, and redemption—but it’s hard to find poignancy when your emotional climax involves a blind man setting booby traps for Lycans like an AARP-approved Rambo.
One minute, Ambrose is reflecting on his dead wife and fractured relationship with his son. The next, he’s coating bullets in silver and digging graves like he’s auditioning for a remake of Home Alone: Full Moon Edition.
The tonal whiplash is real. The film moves from somber monologues about faith to slapstick scenes of werewolves getting impaled on garden tools. You half expect an infomercial voice to pop in: “Are you or someone you love being attacked by geriatric werewolves? Try Ambrose’s patented Silver Solution™—guaranteed to work or your soul back!”
The Pacing: Eternal Night of the Living Snooze
The film’s biggest sin isn’t its budget—it’s its pacing. The middle act is a cinematic black hole where tension goes to die. Ambrose spends most of it walking around his yard, sniffing for clues, and having vaguely threatening conversations with people who could be werewolves but probably just need antihistamines.
By the time the next full moon finally arrives, you’ve lost all sense of urgency. It feels like you’ve aged into the same retirement community. When the action does kick in, it’s almost too little, too late—and too slow to be exciting.
The final battle between Ambrose and the werewolves is meant to be tragic and heroic. Instead, it plays out like Home Alone meets The Grey, if The Grey were shot on a ten-dollar budget and all the wolves were out of shape.
The Ending: Howl’s Boring Castle
In a twist of self-sacrifice, Ambrose intentionally overdoses on his meds before the fight, ensuring he won’t live to become a werewolf. It’s poetic, I guess, in a “grandpa fell asleep during the apocalypse” sort of way.
His son, Will, shows up too late, finds the carnage, and fires a symbolic shot at the moon—a scene that’s supposed to be poignant but lands more like a deleted cut from a Garth Brooks music video.
You leave the film not with chills, but with mild confusion and the urge to check if your streaming service accidentally played it at half speed.
The Verdict: Silver Bullets, Lead Performance
There’s a version of Late Phases that could’ve been great—a gritty, character-driven werewolf Western about aging and courage. Unfortunately, this version feels like it was shot after the director fell asleep reading The Old Man and the Seaand dreamed about Dog Soldiers.
Nick Damici tries his best, the concept has teeth, but the execution has dentures.
By the end, Late Phases isn’t so much a horror film as it is an accidental dark comedy about stubbornness, bad prosthetics, and the futility of digging your own grave before the plot kills you first.
Final Judgment
★☆☆☆☆ — One star for the dog. The only character who died with dignity.
Late Phases proves that even werewolves can’t save a movie from dying of old age. It’s less a full moon and more a half-baked idea—hairy, slow, and destined to fade quietly into the cinematic night.
