The Beast of Bray Road



Phil Jenkins is the newest member of the Walworth Wisconsin police, having just recently moved there from Chicago. So he’s not all that familiar with the local legends, especially when a couple people in their small town go missing and then wind up dead. Jenkins’ thinks they’ve got a regular ole’ psychopath on their hands, or even a rogue wolf. But the locals are all convinced that it’s the Beast of Bray Road, a creature that purportedly pops up once and a while to cause murder and mischief. With the help of the locals and an overly excited crypto-zoologist who just happened to wander into town, Jenkins must now try to figure out what’s really going on in his new rural home.


A damn mess from the looks of it.

Ya know, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that freakin’ Frostbiter (of all things) is going to be the surprise winner here during cryptid month, which is REALLY gonna shock me. Lucky for me though, The Beast of Bray Road wasn’t too bad. It was a hell of a lot better than last week’s 13th Child at least, so it has that going for it. Though it’s not like that film was a very high bar to overcome. That bar was so low that all these filmmakers had to do was bunny hop over the line and the film still would have been leagues better. And, it is (thank heavens!). But, on the other hand, The Beast of Bray Road is also yet another cryptid film in a long list of cryptid films that doesn’t accurately portray its self-titled cryptid in question, so it’s far from perfect. But it did have enough in it to at least make it mildly entertaining, so it does have that in its favor.



For those who are unaware, the Beast of Bray Road is reportedly a wolf-like creature that was originally spotted in Walworth County Wisconsin some time in the 1930s. Reports have it tormenting drivers on…wait for it…Bray Road, sometimes hitting the vehicle, and other times leaving huge claw marks on their cars. It has also supposedly been seen running around during the daytime, and has been credited with killing and mutilating a number of animals. So, you know, your typical cryptid weirdness.



What it hasn’t ever been credited with, is harming or killing any people. Something that it does a lot of in this movie. Like, A LOT. I don’t think you even get five minutes in before it rips someone in two. And then it’s ripping someone apart in their home a couple minutes later, and has taken another poor sap’s head by the half hour mark. So this thing is tearing through auxiliary victims almost faster than the movie can create new ones. Which is fine if you just want your movie to be a bloody good time and don’t care about much else. But it probably sucks for those out there who are sticklers of things like folklore accuracy. So if you go into this looking for that, you’re going to be bummed.


See, look. The peons have already come to complain.

On the plus side though, at least they got the look of the monster right this time. Granted, it’s kinda hard to screw up “wolf-like” when there are already so many werewolf movies out there. But I’ve been supremely disappointed before, so I don’t put it past anyone. Although I’m still kinda torn over the look of this thing. You know how other movies will kind of hide the monster? Like, cloak them in shadow or only show bits and pieces of them at a time before revealing the whole thing? Yeah, this movie kinda started doing that, and then said “Fuck it. They already know it’s a werewolf. Rawr!” about three bloody attacks in, so there’s never really any mystery about what this thing is supposed to look like. I mean, it’s still mostly shot in the dark, so you don’t get a really good look at it until the end, but they’re not going out of their way to hide it, either. And maybe they should have, because by the end you DO get a good look at it and… It looks pretty cheap, actually. Or at least parts of it do. The mouth part is okay, but things like that hump that’s on its back… Well, you can occasionally see it move when it’s not supposed to, so you figure it’s likely a crappy pillow they sewed onto the back of the costume or something. Or at least that was my first thought when I saw it jiggle. So it’s got its ups and downs. But other than that mishap, it’s not too bad a monster for a low-budget film.


Can’t lie though, I’m also a little concerned about its face.

The big downside though? Goodness, is the plot of this film stretched paper thin. The movie is basically little more than a series of gruesome animal attacks occasionally interspersed with short scenes of the other characters trying to figure out what the creature is and how to stop it. Oh, and the leading man getting hit on by just about every female we get introduced to. Which is kind of annoying. But then, most of the other people in town are all bad caricatures of the worst of the worst of every redneck hick you’ve ever been warned about, so I guess I can’t blame them, because the dating pool in town apparently is THAT bad. So the movie basically plays out like: DEATH, _{little bit of plot}, DEATH, NEAR DEATH, _{little more plot}, DEATH, DEATH, _{little more}… Well, you get the idea. And because the movie is killing people off left and right, it becomes really easy to figure out who the killer is well before the big “surprise” reveal at the end because, well, at some point you’ve just run out of other possible suspects. So there’s really not too much mystery here either, I’m afraid. But hey, like I said, if you like gory monster deaths, then you’ll probably still have a good time.


Except Jim Bob back there. Who looks like he got bored and started playing games on his computer.

So, full disclosure, I’m no Beast of Bray Road expert or anything. But I don’t think this movie is a very accurate portrayal of what the Beast is supposed to be. It doesn’t go into any history, and the Beast doesn’t even behave like the many stories claim it should. It really feels more like they just named it The Beast of Bray Road and called it a day. So as a cryptid movie, it’s not very good and will probably irritate some folks. Especially Wisconsin-ites, because a lot of the folks in this movie are not portrayed in a very favorable light. Like, AT ALL.

But if you’re looking for a straight-up, ooey-gooey, werewolf movie, then The Beast of Bray Road is surprisingly pretty decent. Sure, it’s got some plot issues with it. Like wondering why that Crypto-zoologist guy just so happened to be right there at the perfect time (how convenient!), or wondering why the Beast so willingly killed some people while letting others go (I mean, that one chick was RIGHT THERE). But it also has a lot of well done, bloody kills. And it throws you into the action pretty much right away and keeps up a fairly steady pace throughout, so you don’t have to suffer through too much downtime. Okay, yeah, the costume could have been better, but overall the movie’s not too bad. Especially for a low-budget flick.

Ultimately though, your enjoyment of the film is going to depend on what you’re looking for. If you want an accurate cryptid movie about the Beast of Bray Road, it’s pretty meh, I’m afraid. But if you’re a gore fan just looking for a new bloody werewolf/monster movie to watch, then this one is surprisingly decent. Not perfect maybe, and perhaps a little predictable in places, but also decently made and pretty entertaining. At the very least, I’ve seen far, FAR worse.

The Beast of Bray Road is available on a variety of streaming services.

The Beast of Bray Road is also available on DVD.

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