Hunter’s Moon assembles faces familiar to those who follow Canadian television and festival genre films. This time around, they play game developers like August (Steven Morana). Or pushy publicists like Remy (Ari Millen), and obligatory arm candy like Nikki (Supinder Wraith). They’re here together for a launch party for a video game. And that party gets interesting when someone kills off the party goers.

The film shows scenes of mostly female guests leaving the house and meeting their doom. Then it shows the romantic tensions between guests. For one, August tries to find the right words to talk to his cam girl groupie Cheyenne (Holly Deveaux). There’s also something happening August’s boss Brian (Art Hindle) and his ex.

This is a different take on Canadian cabin horror. Instead of a cabin it’s a mansion with panic rooms where its many characters hash out their drama. But the script mostly deals with expository dialogue. Just because a script piles on fact or personality trait doesn’t make these characters complex. And of course all of that halts when the murders happen.

This is basically an Agatha Christie whodunit. Brian points his finger at Nikki’s ex Yannick (Jon Cor) and accuses him of the killing. The audiences know that the killer, whether Yannick or otherwise, is a werewolf. But the fact that most of the characters are oblivious or in denial about this takes away from this spin.

What makes the early Agatha Christie originals great is that they subtly commented on social ills. The werewolf spin feels facile here. And it doesn’t help that Hindle and Millen are playing second fiddle to Morana and Deveaux. The latter couple needed to step up in making this mystery believable. But their line deliveries make it seem like they’re amateurs.

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