Sometimes when you least expect it, a wonderful movie will captivate you so totally that you can’t bear to turn away. Other times you start to watch something that is so horrible, you want to see how badly this train wreck can end up. Hyenas is sadly more the former than the latter.
Hyenas
I honestly couldn’tcare enough to sum this up more more than someone already has on IMDB. “Roving clans of shape-shifting human/hyena creatures prowl and hunt for human prey. They are hunted by one man seeking revenge for the death of his loved ones.” There is some underlying beef between a group of uppity white kids and a group of latino gang members, but it’s a bit thin and really doesn’t matter. That’s pretty much all there is; more importantly, that’s all there is to care about.
First off the box art is atrocious. I guess it’s meant to be sexy in that it has a girl’s butt on it, however, if you can look away from her taunting hairy buttocks and look at her face, you see the issue. What the hell is going on there? It looks like some sort of mishap at the Pokemon factory.
Anyway, Hyenas “stars” Costas Mandylor and Christa Campbell. You wouldn’t be wrong to be left wondering who the hell both of those people are. It would have been better to say, “that guy from the last couple Saw movies, and a hot girl that has been in crappy movies and Maxim.” The real star here is Meshach Taylor, star of Designing Women and the blockbuster hit Mannequin.
Hyenas has the production quality of a SyFy movie, which is to say that there isn’t much value to be had in it’s overall presentation. The difference here is that SyFy movies — especially the recent Roger Corman classics — don’t take themselves very seriously. However Hyenas takes itself way too seriously. A man out for revenge for the death of his family hunts people that can change into hyenas. Only, they apparently can’t change until the ladies take their shirts off first. Sure, that sounds like a serious plot point. There are characters that are introduced to immediately be known as the “bad guy” to everyone — except apparently the film’s cast. The male lead saves a girl, falls in love, and then has sex with a woman that clearly is part of the hyena clan. At one point after her ruse is shattered she tells him “I’m pregnant,” when they just had sex once only two days prior. This may actually be the only scary part of the movie for anyone.
Hyenas is not the worst movie that I have ever seen, but I almost wish it was. At least at that point there would be something I could tell people was worth watching for. There are no redeeming qualities for this movie, unless you are in dire need of seeing half naked girls fight and don’t have the internet after reading this review. Skip this one at all costs.
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