After I finished up my review of Buried Secrets, it was time to watch Night of the Wild.  Night of the Wild, which was produced by the wonderful people at The Asylum, originally aired on the SyFy network on October 3rd.  Much like Ominous, The Hollow, and They Found Hell, it was aired as a part of their 31 Days of Halloween.  I was on vacation when Night of the Wild was originally aired, so I missed it.

Night of the Wild is exactly the type of film that appears to have been made to give me nightmares.  It’s a film about killer dogs and I’ve always been a bit scared of dogs.  Recently, as a result of meeting some very well-behaved and sweet-natured members of the species, I’ve become a little bit more accepting of them but, for the most part, dogs still make me very nervous.  I just can’t deal with all the barking and the growling and the jumping.  Add to that, it freaks me out that dogs are apparently attuned to human emotions because I tend to be pretty moody.  Get a dog around me and chances are my emotional nature will cause them to have a nervous breakdown.

Night of the Wild opens with a green meteorite crashing down to Earth.  It lands near a small farming community.  Soon, glowing chunks of the meteorite are appearing everywhere and the town’s dogs start to turn against their owners.  (It’s debatable whether or not it’s just dogs that go crazy.  One of my favorite shots of the movie is of a hundred cats safely perched up in a tree, as if they’re aware that the dogs are having issues and don’t want anything to do with them.  There’s another shot the features several cows mooing in a slightly ominous fashion, as if they also can’t wait to take out a few farmers.)  It’s pretty much a typical SyFy/Asylum scenario — the dogs go on a rampage through town, a lot of people die, and the members of a family (made up of Rob Morrow, Kelly Rutherford, Tristin Mays, and Carmen Tonry) try to get to safety.

And yet, there are a few things that set Night of the Wild apart from other SyFy films.

First off, there’s the look of the film.  According to the imdb’s trivia section, director Eric Red and cinematographer Spencer Hutchins were inspired by the look of Dario Argento’s classic Suspiria.  And you can certainly tell while watching the film.  The colors are vibrant.  The green glow of the meteorite is often seen in the background.  When the dogs lay siege to a farmhouse, the reddish lighting will remind you of Suspiria‘s scenes of Jessica Harper investigating the hidden passageways of that haunted dance academy.

The other thing that sets apart Night of the Wild is just how violent and gruesome the film eventually becomes.  Unlike Sharknado 3, this is not a comedy.  This is not a film that invites you to laugh over all the mayhem.  Night of the Wild is a grim and dark movie, one in which you’re never quite sure who is going to survive and who is going to fall victim to the dogs.

Night of the Wild is a film that will make you want to hug your favorite cat.