I’m a big fan of the Universal Studios monster films from the 20s through to the early 60s so it comes to no surprise that I would have a passing interest in the remake of the classic The Wolf Man.  To be completely fair though the original whilst quite loved and respected by me, it is not my favourite of those films.

Also I’ll also admit to not really understanding why this film was even being made in the first place, I asked a few people and I couldn’t find anyone amongst them who was actually looking forward to the film when it was announced, we assumed it was to tie in to Twilight’s werewolf craze but I’m not overly convinced on that theory.  I mean the film made some money around the world and since I’ve found some people who really enjoyed it but it just didn’t really capture the world’s attention in my very humble and small opinion.

My personal feeling around the film now having seen it is on par with my thoughts about it when I first heard they were making it: “meh”.

I could take it or leave it.  I’m more likely to leave it now though as I certainly have no burning desire to watch it again.

So what I actually liked:

• I did like the make-up on the werewolves, it captured the feel of the original Wolf Man but of course a lot more detailed.  It doesn’t hurt to have Rick Baker who pretty much wrote the book on this kind of thing (and has the Academy Award to illustrate this fact).
• The film looks good, it is going for the whole gothic, blue sepia thing and it pulls that off really well.
• The general storyline is an interesting re-imagining of the admittedly simple story of the first film.
• Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt are more than passable in this.

I like how you can clearly see the lineage of the 2010 Wolfman played by Benicio Del Toro from the 1941 Wolf Man as played by Lon Chaney Jr.

On to the bad

• Whilst the overall plot is interesting the actual implementation of it and the dialogue is awful.
• Anthony Hopkins is a great actor and I imagine he performed the role given to him in this film really well unfortunately the character and the direction of it were just off putting and really stuck out of place.  The character doesn’t serve the storyline it actually undermines it.
• It’s not Hugo Weaving’s fault that whenever I hear his voice I’m waiting for him to say “Mr. Anderson” but it is the director’s fault and the writer that his character is so underused and developed that had you removed it for a couple of generic parts in its place it would not have affected the film at all.
• Whilst I like the dark and gothic there were whole sequences that were too dark, to the point that I really had trouble making the scene out.  The darkness was probably so overused in parts that what would have been creepy and eerie didn’t turn out that way.
• This brings me to my next issue in that there were no chills or fear in this film at all,  things happened that in any other marginally well handled film I might have jumped and that’s not hard to do.  In my old age I’ve become quite jumpy in horror films so the fact that not once did I jump rates this film somewhere on par with the Care Bears.
• The gore was tedious and stupid in some sequences.  The movie is like a sad middle age dude wearing cheap vampire teeth, a plastic cape whilst standing in the middle of a well lit room saying boo.  The gore was intended to shock but fails to do so on any level.  In fact there is one scene where the Wolfman decapitates a guy by taking a giant swipe at his head and all I could think was that it doesn’t work like that.
• At the end I realised that I just didn’t care about any of these characters at all which is a huge failing in a horror film.  Stephen King is brilliant because he creates complex characters in his books that you care about or at least know and then he puts them through the worst hell.  Here I could care less about any of them.

I think there are plenty of people out there who will disagree and manage to find enough in this film to keep them entertained.  I’m going to stick to the nostalgia of the original for the time being.  An interesting note though is that they changed the title of the film, the original was The Wolf Man whilst this one was The Wolfman.  I wonder if this was a conscience decision to differentiate the two films (particularly in search engines??).

Rating:

So have you seen The Wolfman?  What did you think?