Teen Wolf Review

For a while this is a much better show than its premise or its network suggested. The first two seasons run on real dread, and the third is the high point of the whole run, splitting into two halves and giving Dylan O'Brien a possession arc that asks more of him than anyone had before. He is the best thing here by a distance, and the show knows it, which becomes a problem once it has to survive without the rest of the original ensemble.

Everything after that is attrition. Characters vanish between seasons, new ones arrive fully formed and leave without consequence, and the mythology accumulates rules faster than it can use them. The lighting is flat basic cable blue, the effects work ages badly, and the dialogue alternates between sincere and arch without ever committing to either. The final years feel like a cast turning up for a show that ended two seasons earlier. Worth it for season three, which is genuinely frightening, and hard to defend past it.