I come from the school of thought that believes “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Unfortunately, that’s not possible when providing honest and unbiased movie reviews. Raised by Wolves marks the 4th entry from The Butcher Brothers that I have seen. It also marks the 4th disappointment. Their stories always seem strong enough when reading a synopsis, and their production value is certainly above lots of indie horror that passes my eyeballs. Something else just fails to click. I want to like these guys. I mean, how cool does The Butcher Brothers sound?

Raised by Wolves follows a group of young adults as they pursue their perfect summer skate spot. There is a local legend of a deceased Charles Manson type character that has a compound way outside of the Indian reservation that most of our leads reside in. This compound is also rumored to have an empty pool in mint condition somewhere on the land. That is obviously enough to get the kids excited. They secure a van and head to the land that no others dare go….to skate.

The interesting thing is that our actors seem to be doing all of the skating in the film. That being said, the acting skills (as well as the skating skills) are average at best. Performances range from atrocious to acceptable, but effects pretty much always hover around the atrocious marker. The few scenes that do have special effects, are so poorly done that it completely destroys any sort of tension that may  have otherwise existed. That would be bad enough, but the real shame is that they weren’t even needed. The scenes would have greatly benefited from no effects at all.

Subpar performances and horrible effects aren’t the only problems though.Raised by Wolves seems to just keep going…and going…..and going. This is the kind of film that would have made a hell of a Masters of Horror episode back in the day, but simply cannot survive as a feature film. Did I forget to mention that it’s also Found Footage? Yeah… so it has that going for it as well.

Truth be told, it wasn’t all bad. The characters were at least defined well enough for me to stay interested for the first 40 minutes or so. In the end, Raised by Wolves is yet another Butcher Brothers film that fails to capitalize on a decent idea.