The Wolfman

The Wolfman? Didn’t that movie come out like two years ago or something? Why would I review a movie that’s almost two years old outside of a Rewind segment? Well as it turns out this film turns out to be a great example of a bad example, and passing up a chance to review it would be a huge mistake to express a great number of personal beliefs when it comes to making a quality film. Plus when you think about it, the film isn’t really THAT old, so we can use it to properly discuss the importance of great potential in film being completely squandered.

When I first heard they were going to remake this film my first thought was something along the lines of “Why?” I thought that remaking this film was yet another example of Hollywood using a established brands to try and cash in the quick buck.

But when I calmed down and got over my initial shock I realized that this film was actually a perfect candidate to be remade. At this point it was the last original Universal Monster film to be adapted (Dracula and the The Mummy had both been released and more or less embraced by audiences, Frankenstein… not so much), and when it was originally released it lacked a lot of the tools and funding that could have made it a really good monster movie. Then I heard Benicio Del Toro was attached to the film as the titular character, and my hopes really started to peak. Not only is he one of my favorite actors, but casting him was perfect, as even on his best days he looks like Javier Bardem perpetually transforming into a werewolf.

Then I heard that some more of my all time favorite actors (Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving) and one of my favorite up and comers (Emily Blunt) were on board, and my excitement flat out started to soar.

And then I heard Joe Johnston was directing…

Well, I can deal with that I suppose. I mean I liked The Rocketeer, and October Sky, and… Timothy Dalton in The Rocketeer. And even though Johnston has made some real stinkers in his time (Jurassic Park III, The Pagemaster) the bulk of his films were very passable. Plus he fought his ass off to get this movie made as an R film instead of PG-13, so clearly he knows what this film is supposed to be about. Then I saw the trailer and I was back to being like “Hey, neato! This looks really cool, this looks like what a Wolfman movie should be!”

Oh how I was mistaken, oh the sad, sad pain I was in for once the second half of the film systematically began to violate my childhood memories.

Now in all fairness I’m not gonna hesitate to say that I absolutely loved the first half of this film. The film looked absolutely beautiful, and Victorian era London has never looked more alive or more terrifying. Dark, twisted, foggy forests and bogs are used to great effect to create an atmosphere that elicits fear while an industrial city of London elicits an atmosphere of a spooky early metropolis full of tasty Wolfman treats. The opening scene brings us into the action with a short, terrifying chase leading to an off screen death, the only reveal of the Wolfman being a bloody claw, a perfect throwback to the classic Universal monster films of old.

We meet the bulk of our main characters and for the most part I like them. They may be one dimensional and shallow, but they are real enough as simple werewolf bait, and Del Toro brings a fantastic sense of sorrow and remorse to the role of Lawrence Talbot that hasn’t really explored that side of a monster before. We meet the love interest, and this is the first sign of impending doom that we get from the film. There is NO chemistry between the two leads, and while I typically love Anthony Hopkins it appears that in this film he seems to be almost… parodying himself. To make matter more complicated is the fact that his entire character seems to be contradictory, and while this may be alluding to the nature of his character (I’ll touch on that later) it seems like it’s more of a writing problem than a character point.

But all these problems go right out the damn window once we see the wonder that is the Wolfman in this film. Our first glance occurs at a gypsy camp, a gory tour de force that shows a crowd squealing with delight at how an R rated monster movie SHOULD be filmed, entrails raining and blood spurting at every possible moment. This culminates with Lawrence being (of course) bitten by the Wolf, and following this is a montage of his healing for the majority of the next month. We pick back up just days before the next full moon, and it’s during this time that we see the transformation Lawrence has already gone through.

This is a great moment, as we see a new, confident, and dangerous Lawrence beginning to emerge. One of my favorite scenes revolved around Talbot casually walking (actually more like strutting) into a room with a formerly aggressive dog following on his heels to meet the detective following the murders. The sheer confidence and quiet menace that Del Toro exudes is palpable, and his calm grin says more than all the dialogue in the world could accomplish. This all leads into Lawrence’s first transformation, and it’s at this point that I really began to love this film. The transformation scenes are nothing short of perfection, bones snap and crack to realign as Lawrence’s form becomes that of a feral, savage beast.

Each transformation scene is fantastic to watch, with the final product being a perfect combination of modern make-up and prosthetics and the original design from the Lon Cheney Jr. version. There’s a segment that really stands out where Lawrence transforms in front of a college class in the middle of London, and this scene is hands down my favorite moment in the film. Johnston pulls out all the stops in this moment, giving us a beautifully shot gore-fest that nearly brought tears to my eyes. It was so exciting and so indulging to the monster movie lover that it almost single-handedly justified why a remake of this film should be made. Everything was going great in the film… until the second half began ruining it all.

Just like this

Right around the second half of the film things begin spiraling down the drain in terms of direction and story, and surprisingly it’s not because of the effects. Instead, it’s because the story apparently doesn’t know what it wants to be and suddenly transitions into something a werewolf movie should never be. The film goes from focusing on the duality of man’s nature and turns into a cheesy, ham-fisted attempt at becoming an Oedipal story.

You see, what makes the legend of the werewolf so terrifying isn’t the fact that it’s a big scary monster that’s going to eat you (well… maybe it’s that a little), but it’s the idea of losing yourself to the dark side of man’s dual nature. The idea of devolving from a man into a raging, hulking animal beast that would eat your friends and family if you could is waaaaaay more disturbing to the psych, especially since man’s nature has always had two sides to it, a yin to every yang. It’s the same reason the modern idea of the zombie is so terrifying. A slow, shambling stupid person who could bite you isn’t as scary as the idea of becoming a zombie, losing your humanity and transforming into one of the masses, nothing on your mind except eating those closest to you is way scarier than just getting bitten.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s story The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explored the idea of man’s dual nature, and if you think about it the original Wolfman could almost be seen as an adaptation of the classic story. A great deal of the story revolved around Larry Talbot having visions of his time as a monster and fighting the urge to hurt those he loved, which was a metaphor for Larry fighting the dark side of every man’s nature. His transformation into a monster is really nothing more than a man losing control and letting himself give in to that dark side of humanity that threatens to turn every person into an agent of evil.

Unrelated photo

In this film however, this interesting execution is completely replaced with something that doesn’t belong anywhere near a Wolfman movie, a metaphor for the Oedipal Complex.

In a nutshell, the Oedipal complex is a psychoanalytic idea that everyman has a subconscious desire to murder their father and have sex with their mother. It’s a highly debated and often rebutted idea in psychology, but that hasn’t stopped it from being a driving force in many classic films. This theory and idea has been featured in the most diverse films imaginable, in everything from Psycho to Star Wars, but a good film usually tends to incorporate personal struggles and themes into their films. The main protagonists in Robocop and The Matrix were supposed to actually be interpretations of Jesus , Spiderman is supposed to be a thinly veiled coming of age story, Batman in The Dark Knight was supposed to be a representation of George Bush fighting terrorism, and even Top Gun was supposed to be an allegory for a gay man struggling to come out of the closet. Every script worth its salt will typically have an underlying purpose to it.

Although some are less subtle than others

The problem with The Wolfman however isn’t that it tries to convey a message, the problem is that is decides to depict the least appropriate message imaginable for the type of film it comes across as. When you are making a monster movie, and addressing the duality of man falls directly into your lap, then you should just go with it and give the film a little more depth while your werewolf is eating villagers by the dozen. Instead, Johnston decides to shoehorn a really inappropriate message into the film about halfway through instead of just sticking with what he started to address in the first half of the film. It just comes across really awkward, and it would be like if halfway through Iron Man 2 they decided to completely throw away the entire reference of Tony Stark being the “objectivist hero” from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged the and turned it into a coming of age story instead.

The writing also seems to drop right off the face of the Earth about halfway through as well, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the actual writing itself or because there is nothing going on between Benicio and Emily chemistry wise. It just feels like they knew the film had a great first half, but then they panicked and thought they needed more depth and soulful writing in the second half to make it a more meaningful film. Monster movies aren’t supposed to be Oscar contenders, they’re just happy, pulpy, guilty pleasures for twisted people like me. If you wanted to you could even make a great monster film without any blood, just look at Monster Squad.

As much as I loved the first half of this film I felt devastated as the second half completely derailed all of the credit the first half created. I’d love to tell you that we have another great monster movie remake in our midst, but much of the appeal this film could have had is somewhat squandered by the end. If you’re a fan of gore and monster films you definitely shouldn’t pass this movie up, but there isn’t much more going for it than that.

6.5 OUT OF 10