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  • Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving, Geraldine Chaplin and Art Malik
  • Written By: Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self
  • Directed By: Joe Johnston
  • Series:

The Wolfman Movie Review

The Wolfman Provides Some Hair-Raising Fun

By Rob Vaux     February 10, 2010


The Wolfman Movie Review
© Mania/Bob Trate

 

 
Considering all of the horrendous production problems The Wolfman faced, it's a miracle we have a completed movie at all. The fact that it's actually rather good comes as icing on the cake. It speaks to gorehounds and film historians alike: chock full of creative bloodletting, but with a sense of flair and old-fashioned atmosphere unseen in cinemas since Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow.
 
Old School Horror
Not only that, but it wears the clichés like a badge of honor, appropriating all manner of Gothic chestnuts with the eagerness of a true aficionado. The gypsy curses, the silver bullets, the slow rise of the moon over the moors… they're all here, given just enough of an update to excuse their creaky status. Amid the cynical excesses of torture porn and too-hip teen-oriented thrillers, its adherence to an older school of horror feels as comfortable as a worn pair of slippers.
 
Which isn't to say it's dull. Director Joe Johnston resolutely believes in the power of sudden shocks, and with a werewolf loose in the English countryside, we're treated to numerous sights of hapless victims caught unawares. Johnston has a flair for ghoulish creativity as well, leading to more than a few chuckles as the bloodletting begins in earnest.
 
The Beast Within
The fulcrum is Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), an aristocrat estranged from his father and now making his way as a successful stage actor. Then he receives a letter from his brother Ben's fiancé (Emily Blunt), begging him to return to the ancestral family estate. Ben has gone missing and she fears the worst. Shortly after Talbot arrives, those fears become manifest. His brother has been torn to pieces by some kind of wild animal… though the villagers have some other, darker theories on-hand. Talbot soon finds out just how accurate they are, as he becomes the very creature he pursues. Alternately embraced and discarded by his father (Anthony Hopkins), while being hounded by a diligent police inspector (Hugo Weaving), he's left alone to find a way out of the nightmare that has engulfed him.
 
The material requires a very stylistic director to pull off correctly. All those fog-shrouded trees and lantern-bearing peasants scream for a little panache, and Johnston--though resolutely competent--lacks the flair to pull it off. That said, he endows the proceedings with a certain measure of elegance: keeping the plot on-track and letting the whole "beast within" subtext percolate merrily among the principles. The Wolfman contains its share of slow patches, but the gorgeous art direction and fine sense of mood hold our attention until things pick up. The make-up effects come courtesy of the legendary Rick Baker, along with some passable-but-not spectacular CGI that can't hold a candle to his gorgeous prosthetics. Those pining for an Olde Tyme Monster Movie will find a solid balance between past traditions and modern sensibilities here.
 
The Wolfman also pays more careful attention to the characters than one might expect. It's not Shakespeare, but the script by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self permits the various tensions--between father and son, peasant and ruler, order and chaos--to roam free a bit. That invests the onscreen figures with our sympathy and interest, allowing us to view them as more than empty ciphers. (That helps make up for the less-than-sparkling dialogue.) Del Toro looks like hammered shit, as usual, but he conveys the character's inherent sadness just as Lon Cheney did seventy years ago. The twinkle in Hopkins' eye reminds us all to relax, while Weaving's clinical detective brings genuine morality to an otherwise stock antagonist role. They all understand the necessities of simple entertainment, and hold just enough depth to let us enjoy it properly.
 
In some ways, The Wolfman is the flip side of the Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. Both films posited a battle between knowledge and fear, but while Holmes trumped superstition beneath its hero's keep eye, this film knows that science can't answer everything, and that there may be some very good reasons to fear the dark. They both serve as testaments to the strength of older stories, and how you can bring them up date without losing the core of their identity. The Wolfman is unmistakably the lesser of the pair, but it has its share of joys to impart, and considering how long we had to wait for them, their reliability becomes an extremely pleasant surprise.
 

 

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axia777 2/10/2010 1:17:02 PM

Sweet! I am going with my daughter to see this soon!

This positive review also gives me a lot of confidence in the directors skills to make Captain America a great movie! Bring on the Cap!

MrJawbreakingEquilibrium 2/10/2010 1:50:02 PM

I know a lot of people are going to cry about the CGI but Rick Baker himself said in an interview he can't wait to get his hands on CGI and use it as well.  Along with what he does.  

shadowprime 2/10/2010 3:06:09 PM

 

Great to hear! Loved the original, and had high hopes for this ... it has been a long time since I have seen a good, fun "monster movie", and it sounds like this delivers. Looking forward to seeing it (as soon as we dig out from six zillion feet of snow!)...

Shadow

CaptAmerica04 2/10/2010 4:27:05 PM

Hear, hear, Axia!  I agree totally!  This movie is going to really give me hope or crush it completely for "First Avenger: CA."

axia777 2/10/2010 5:16:06 PM

Well so far everything I have heard about the Wolfman has been very positive.  That means nothing but good news for Captain America.  If Johnston can work through the sh*t storm that was the dev cycle of this Wolfman movie and still make it great imagine what he can do if he has a bunch of cash and a good work cycle! 

Captain America is going to kick ass.  Now we just need to hear who they are putting up for the part.

gauleyboy420 2/10/2010 5:49:33 PM

his is great news, Can't wit to see this. I LOVE CGI, don't get why everyone bitches about it.  Thats like people in the 60's complaining about stop motion and Blue screen or Matte painted backgrounds.

 

It is what it is...its not going anywhere, except for getting better looking.

That said, I am glad this has a mix of the old and new.

Been a long time since i've seen a good werewolf movie

myklspader 2/10/2010 8:20:02 PM

 Glad to find an early review (just skimmed so I don't get spoilers). Also good to know it is better than expected. I like Johnson but I had reservations when I Heard he was coming in. I would have liked to have seen a Mark Romanek made flick but at least Rick Baker seems to be on his best game for the FXs. 

Cannot wait until Friday night. Now… if I can only sneak Marley, by Border Collie into this. He seems to be looking at the TV screen each time the trailers are on, so I guess he is getting in touch with his distant wolf heritage. 

Moz72 2/10/2010 9:09:12 PM

We have Coppola's Dracula, Sommer's The Mummy, and  now Joe Johnston's Wolfman.

Only movies left to re-make of the original Universal Monsters are Frankenstein, The Creature, and the Invisible Man.

akiraakobus 2/10/2010 11:47:23 PM

Just screened this one at the movie theater I work at part time, and while it was a good movie it was beautifully shot, however the pacing in film seemed really off some things happened way to fast and others almost made the film seem kind of slow, as well as some parts being very predictable, and to be honest some sequences in this movie were just kind of weird in a trippy kind of way.  That aside however the movie was indeed fun to watch and I would recommend it to Horror movie fans, don't go to the movie expecting to be scared, the film in my opinion was creepy in a couple of places but never really scary.

Dazzler 2/11/2010 4:40:40 AM

Any word on the soundtrack?

I preordered one based on Danny and hype alone.  And the trailer song. 

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