Folks leaving theaters may be compelled to howling into the night, induced by seeing Joe Johnston’s remake of Universal’s classic THE WOLFMAN, but don’t assume these are howls of appreciation. While Joe Johnston (JUMANJI, HIDALGO) starts the film out right… dark, moody and Gothic, playing somewhat on the old school vibe that allows the original to remain enjoyable, however the consistency begins to fall apart soon after.
The story is fairly straight-forward… silly man goes out into the dark woods against the town’s warnings, silly man gets attacked and bitten by a powerful creature of the night, silly man becomes a werewolf. We all know the basic premise. However, it’s the underlying story of Lawrence Talbot, played by Benicio Del Toro (TRAFFIC, CHE), and his relationship to Sir John Talbot and his brother’s wife Gwen, played by Emily Blunt (THE YOUNG VICTORIA).
Lawrence is an American actor in London, called away to Blackmoore by his brother Ben’s wife Gwen, pleading for his help locating her husband who recently went missing. Upon Lawrence’s arrival, Ben’s body (or, what was left of it) had already been discovered. This prompts Lawrence to seek out who, or what, killed his brother.
The pace of THE WOLFMAN varies slightly, with a comfortably slow beginning, with the audience being tossed headlong into Lawrence’s first transformation soon after. If there’s one thing done reasonably well in the film, I’d say the transformation effects were effective, believable and better than expected… for the most part. Expect AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON with added CGI tweaking from the transformation scenes.
THE WOLFMAN isn’t a complete flop. The movie has its moments, especially concerning scenes featuring Hugo Weaving (THE MATRIX, LORD OF THE RINGS) as Abberline from Scotland Yard, and Sir Anthony Hopkins (HANNIBAL, FRACTURE) as Sir John Talbot. This plot becomes something of a strange love triangle, of which I found no reasonable use except to quantify Gwen’s involvement in the film’s ending.
The most disappointing element of THE WOLFMAN was the complete failure of the film to be scary. The movie ultimately plays out like a suspense-action flick with werewolves, and when it does attempt to be “scary†it relies solely on stock made-you-jump tactics. For a Gothic monster movie, it’s neither frightening nor is it consistently very Gothic, often removing itself completely from time and place by scenes of over-indulgent CGI-enhanced action sequences.
Another element of THE WOLFMAN I found questionably intriguing was its uneven attempt to be a little funny, relying a great deal on violent humor during the extremely bloody and graphic scenes of an attacking werewolf. Coincidentally, these were the scenes that had the most creative impulse and garnered the most favorable audience reactions.
Other notable elements of THE WOLFMAN that standout include the over-use of “head-on†shots of Lawrence as a charging werewolf, which are absurdly bad, inconsistency in the werewolf’s design as portrayed on screen, especially with its legs, and… on a slightly more positive not, an effective albeit very familiar score from composer Danny Elfman. Overall, THE WOLFMAN isn’t a terribly bad movie, but will likely disappoint fans of the 1941 original.
