The Wolfman (2010) – Review

It seems that almost as long as I can remember, Universal gave been trying to jump start their Universal Monsters series much like zapping bolts of lightning directly into those bolts in the neck of Frankenstein’s Monster. If the studio wasn’t trying to panel beat it into an MCU style connected universe with the disastrous, aborted, Dark Universe, it was remolding The Mummy into an Indiana Jones style adventure, cramming everyone into the lamentable Van Helsing, or constantly seeing numerous attempts to remake The Creature From The Black Lagoon collapse.
However, one of the more sensible tries to get their classic pantheon of creatures back on the big screen could have been The Wolfman, a lavish, period-set reboot of the original, 1941 flick that essentially set in stone the majority of the rules we now associate with lycanthropy.
However, creative differences and director retirings threw the movie into its own phase of painful transformation as original helmer, Mark (One Hour Photo) Romanek, left the production only for Joe (Jumanji) Johnston to step in mere weeks before shooting began. Violent changes are nothing new for Werewolf flicks, but usually it comes from within the titular beast…

Sensitive actor Lawrence Talbot is returning to his gloomy homestead of Blackmoor after news reaches him that his brother, Ben, has died at the hands – or claws to put it more accurately – of some mysterious beast that apparently boned the poor bastard like a fish. Upon arriving, he is bombarded by many sensations both familiar and strange as he reunites with his estranged father, the rather cold Sir John; fields the various paranoid accusations of the local town folk and suffers vivid memories of discovering his mother in his father’s arms after she apparently took his own life – but while all these things are obviously a lot to deal with, he finds a kind of solace in the company of Gwen, the woman who was due to marry his mutilated sibling.
However, after Lawrence goes to a local gypsy camp to enquire about his brother’s death, the group and a bunch of invading, angry locals are set upon by a powerful creature that tears through its victims like a tiger with an especially malicious IQ and in the melee, Talbot is violently savaged on the shoulder. After a short time, Lawrence heals worryingly fast, but there’s no real antidote or balm for the curse he now carries as he is now doomed to transform into a brutal Wolfman whenever the full moon hangs in the sky like a Bat Signal of death.
After amassing something of a messy body count of his own, Lawrence is horrified at what he has become and looks for a way out, but thanks to the machinations of both Inspector Francis Aberline and Larry’s own father, our tortured hero finds himself locked in an asylum for his violent “delusions”. With so many questions circling around, can Talbot manage to find an end to his hair sprouting nightmare and discover the identity of the one that turned him, or is he condemned to slaughter the ones he loves while smelling of wet dog?

Regrettably flawed presumably due to the issues behind the camera, you can’t deny that this version of The Wolfman certainly digs its claws in when it comes to delivering some some lushly shot, old school razzle dazzle that includes real sets, gorgeous photography and an all star cast. In fact, lead Benicio Del Toro is something of a super fan of the original and considered portraying the complex Lawrence Talbot as something of a dream role and make up master Rick Baker also cherished getting the gig to reinvent the classic humanoid Jack Pierce design, so The Wolfman actually had a good shot of becoming that rarest of beasts; a modern werewolf movie that cuts the mustard. However, despite all those things, The Wolfman has its talons dulled by some clumsy tonal transitions that causes the story to shapeshift as painfully as Talbot does. The quieter moments of the story goes hard on the father/son dynamic as it uses the transition of lycanthropy as a metaphor for everything from parental abuse to mental illness and it almost seems to harken forward to the more thoughtful horrors that the likes of Robert Eggers, Jennifer Kent and Aster would produce only a couple of years later.
However, Joe Johnston isn’t exactly the sort of guy you hire to deliver a thought provoking, subtlety fest that favours slow chills over violent thrills, so whenever Talbot feels the lupine flush coming on, Johnston slams the movie into high gear and starts throwing in more graphic gore than you’d normally get with a studio financed horror film bankrolled in the 2010s. As a result, scenes of utter carnage that sees claws emerging from people’s mouths and innards flung about with reckless abandon end up sitting a little awkwardly when lined up against the more dramatic aspects of the script. However, in a bizarre twist, I have to be honest that I’m not entirely sure which one I actually prefer – the moody, brooding family melodrama or the big monster scenes that – at one point – amusingly riff on an 1890s version of the car crash sequence from An American Werewolf In London.

Benicio Del Toro looks suitably depressed as the tragic Talbot, but you suspect the real reason he signed up is to get smothered in state of the art prosthetics and unleash the beast, however, as feral as he gets he can’t even hope to match the malevolent gleam that constantly flickers in the eye of Anthony Hopkins as Lawrence’s predatory patriarch. The former Hannibal Lector is obviously in the phase of his career where he would be in absolutely anything just as long as he could have fun with it and you just know he’s getting a kick from every sly glare or hammed up line (“You’ve done terrible things…”). Given a rather thankless role (as most women are in these things) is Emily Blunt who plays the love interest disappointingly straight, which is a shame condering how much mileage films like A Quiet Place and Edge Of Tommorow got out of her from a monster fighting perspective. Rounding out the main cast is Hugo Weaving who chiefly alternates between wry wit and gob smacked shock as the Inspector assigned the case, but for horror fans brought up during a certain period, the most exciting name in the credits belongs to Rick Baker.
With An American Werewolf In London, Baker helped redefine what make up effects could achieve with a stunning transformation sequence that remains undefeated to this day, but even though the artist delivers a genuinely kickass, classic breed of werewolf that invokes the original design by turning the ferocity up to eleven, the film chickens out of letting the legendary effects master try to outdo himself and instead delivers some pretty iffy CGI in order to not alienate a modern audience weaned on digital effects.

To those in the know, it’s a crushing disappointment and the film’s identity issues certainly don’t help, but if you squint a little, you can see the movie that could have been, lurking just under the skin. But even a movie who is pure of heart and does it’s rewrites by night may become troubled when the behind the scenes issues bloom and creative differences burn bright…
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