The Wolfman (2010) Review, Or: He Does Indeed Have Nards

With my current schedule being filled to the point that I’ve more than slipped away from my reviewing process, it’s nice to come back and enjoy the soothing nature of the wordsmith. Rather it be tearing into an old Ulli Lommel vehicle (see Tranny Trash #2) or verbally caressing a modern masterpiece such as Deadgirl, it is simply a pleasure to sit down and let the thoughts flow.  By far my favorite form of such leisure is the careful critique of a good, dumb little slice of horror entertainment.  Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman.

Between the phenomenal trailer and the questionable talent involved (Johnston’s best credit being The Rocketeer), I found myself with a torn opinion about the likelihood of the remake of 1941’s The Wolf Man being any more than “meh” worthy.  I had been deceived by quality trailers before (oh god, Halloween II, oh god), and Johnston was by no means a favorite.  The writing team seemed adequate, but their respective careers were simply too spotty to give an adequate opinion, since it is my belief that the man who writes both Road to Perdition and the remake of The Haunting can not be trusted.  However, with the inclusion of makeup FX extraordinaire Rick Baker I knew that at very least I would be in for a visual treat.  Was I right?  Yes…  yes I was.

Baker nailed the wolf man makeup perfectly and easily improved on his predecessor’s designs.  Gone is the ridiculous Jew-fro of Lon Chaney Jr.’s hairy alter ego, while the clothing aspect that most other films of this ilk dismiss remains intact, giving us fans just the right amount of authenticity, cheese, and creepiness that we asked for, or at least I did.  The almost 100% CGI transformation scenes were also handled fairly well, though I would have much preferred a call-back to Baker’s early accomplishments in An American Werewolf in London, but ce la vie.  Modern Hollywood film making dictates that such things must be done with computers, and so if it must be done, let it be done well.

The next most important aspect is a worthy successor to Chaney, who was by and large the most memorable aspect of the original film.  His performance had a warm subtlety to it that made us as an audience pine for his release from the curse that would eventually take his life, and while I can’t help but miss his somewhat misogynistic antics, his replacement is more than adequate.  Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot is fantastic, in that his performance takes Chaney’s subtlety and brings in his own odd flavoring, mainly to account for his character’s rewritten status as a former mental patient.  As the Wolf Man, he is suitably ferocious and strangely vulnerable at some points, without sacrificing any badassery, even if there is some to spare.

Anthony Hopkins (who’s gotten faaaaaaaat) succeeds as the head of the supporting cast, playing the villainous father to Talbot.  While I could technically compare his performance to Claude Rains’ original role, it’s such a totally different character (the only similarity being a similar whoop-ass-via-cane bit) that it is almost unfair.  I enjoyed both equally, but Rains played a kind and caring father with a somewhat harsh idea for a cure, while Hopkins is just plain mean.  At times he’s humorous and other times he seems almost fatherly, but he’s really just mean.  Big ol’ meanie pants, that’s him.

The slightly more complex antagonist, Abberline, is played by Hugo Weaving, who basically takes the best aspects of V and Agent Smith and mixes them into a pot of kickass stew.  His Scotland Yard detective is so cool, charismatic and eloquently flawed that it’s sort of a shame he isn’t the hero of the piece.  In relation to the original, he’s basically a substitute for the douchey fiancee character, except he’s badass and worked on the Jack the Ripper case…  so yeah, it’s a pretty small connection.  Meanwhile, Emily Blunt is a more than suitable love interest, though her character’s inclusion feels much more contrived than in the original.

Here lies the problem unfortunately:  the script.  Written by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, it’s basically a lycanthrope-centric Sleepy Hollow without Tim Burton, and since the biggest flaw with that film was its convoluted plot, go figure that it would be the same here.  Considering that Self wrote Sleepy Hollow, this isn’t a huge surprise.  Rather than the brisk “oh shit gypsy werewolf bit me!” plot of the original, here we have a whole pseudo-surrealistic mystery about the murder of Ben Talbot, as well as Lawrence’s past and their mom and yadda yadda yadda.  None of it is the least bit compelling, nor is the identity of the werewolf a very well kept secret.  Once the Bela character from the original didn’t show up, I made a mental note of who the killer had to be.  Go fig, I was right.  Dear Mr. Self, recreating a story by giving it a complicated, dream-filled storyline isn’t a surefire solution, so stop.

With that whopper of negativity out of the way, I’d like to take a U-turn back to Mr. Baker by saying that despite the piss-poor story, this is by no means a bad movie… it’s just a B-movie.  It may not have the subtle paint strokes of plot that made flicks like Bad Moon and Ginger Snaps special, but it easily buys its way into my heart with a plethora of nifty kill scenes.  Johnston’s creepy direction and excellent Gothic atmosphere give us more than enough eye candy in-between the gore, which is a riot and a half, with decapitations, burning, gutting, dismemberment, and impalement all spread throughout what is the pure awesomeness of the mostly practical violence.

The Wolfman:  proving that all a good horror movie needs is buckets of red stuff.

6.5/10