This 2010 remake of The Wolfman (1941) makes for an entertaining monster movie. Just don't expect the elegance and flow of the original story that involved viewers so deeply in the plight of the characters and made an icon out of the monster. As wonderful as the special effects are here, they will likely be the only reason this wolfman becomes any sort of icon.
That isn't to say I wouldn't watch it again.
Director Joe Johnston has made some fine bigger budget films over the years including The Rocketeer (1991) Jumanji (1995) and Jurassic Park III (2001). Here he was brought in after Mark Romanek , director of the underrated One Hour Photo (2002) walked out over studio issues. By all counts Universal has engaged in exactly the sort of meddling that would try any directors patience and it's a mark of Johnstons skill that The Wolfman is as coherent and enjoyable as it is.
He certainly didn't have to worry about his cast. Benecio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, and Emily Blunt all acquit themselves admirably and Hugo Weaving has an absolute blast with his role as a Scotland Yard Inspector. But as written the film just doesn't give its players anything to do except play to type. The end result isn't unlike the Hammer Films of the fifties except here we get a sort of gloomy melodrama reminiscent of the AIP Poe films.
Lawrence Talbot is an actor returning home to his estranged family after his bother goes missing on the moors. Awaiting him are his mad father and his brothers grieving widow who tell him his brother has been found dead, savagely ripped apart by a person or animal unknown. Pledging to find the killer Lawrence instead becomes a victim himself, bitten by the beast and doomed to transform every full moon into the same marauding killer.
Whenever the wolfman himself is onscreen the picture shines. The energetic take on the character, the dynamic transformation sequences and retro creature design (as well as gory kills and eerie dream sequences) are an easy match for most anything thats gone on in werewolf cinema before. Scenes where the wolfman runs on all fours are absolutely breathtaking.
But the rest of the time one gets a sense of a film frustrated by it's own hyperactive tendency to leap forward on all fours when it should be slowing down to develop its characters. Suspense? The film never really pauses long enough to build any though plenty of scenes start out as though thats what we should expect. Is it Johnstons fault? The cuts in this film are just too odd to be the work of a deliberate creative entity and the general herky jerkiness of the film suggests that someone who doesn't know much about story was making demands.
It doesn't help that the script by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self is reminiscent of their two most spectacular failures. Self penned the god awful remake of The Haunting (1999) and Walker the tepid Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow (1999) two films that only pretend to be movies but are actually simple special effects/set dressing vehicles offering wooden characters. How much of their original screenplay for this film wound up on the floor? The story that reached the screen has no empathetic thru-line. The sense of tragedy that has always been The Wolfmans heart and soul was rooted in the relationship between the father and the son. Here in spite of very strong cast, the characters spend precious little time relating at all. When they aren't involved in action sequences they brood at one another, spout lines like "Sometimes the monsters hunt you." and generally behave as if they barely knew each other.
But what misses as drama gives the veteran cast the chance to work with the little the script gives them. The Wolfman has plenty of nods to the Universal era and everyone at least arrives with their type intact. One only wishes that there were more scenes like the one in which Hopkins leans over the dirty bloody passed out form of Del Toro and says, in a quiet little sing-songy voice, "Lawrence? Lawrence? Terrible things Lawrence, you've done terrible things." And the transformation sequence in the insane asylum is absolutely one of the best werewolf moments ever managing to be both horrifying and hilarious. But rather than explore the ironic possibilities the film largely focusses on playing the tragedy by the numbers creating all the sequences one would expect but to little or no emotional effect.
And where is Maleva the gypsy in all this? In the original film she was a pivotal shaman, a constant goad in the side of those who refused to acknowledge the supernatural. The scenes in which she comforted Lon Chaney Jrs Talbot from wolf to human form were deeply moving and even vindicating for viewers who were, not only sympathetic with his curse, but yearned for his redemption. Here she is barely present played with aplomb by Geraldine Chaplin but hardly in the position of moral or spiritual authority. We barely sense in her any mystical presence at all. That is the saddest thing about this film. It has little inherent sense of the spiritual aspect of the most basic of human relationships, that of father to son and seems to content to merely mine those relationships for simple theatrics. This is indeed a modern remake.
That isn't to say I wouldn't watch it again.