The Wolfman

2010
Dir. Joe Johnston

Upon returning to his ancestral home to help search for his missing brother, Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) is viciously attacked by the same mysterious beast that is revealed to have torn his brother to shreds. Quickly recovering from the ordeal, Talbot soon realises that the beast was a werewolf and he is now marked by the same curse – doomed to transform into a slathering beast under the light of the full moon. Can his father (Anthony Hopkins) and his brother’s widow Gwen (Emily Blunt) help him find a cure before it's too late?

It’s an amazing feat that The Wolfman made it to cinemas at all given its troubled production history. The project was originally set to be helmed by Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo and various Nine Inch Nails music videos), however he was dissatisfied with the level of studio interference and was soon replaced by director Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III). Countless reshoots, re-cuts and test audience screenings later and The Wolfman has finally been allowed to see the light of day. The film was written by Andrew Kevin Walker – who penned the darker than dark Se7en and 8MM – and even though it has the potential to, it never really reaches the dark depths explored in those films. It is obvious that Universal has tried to make The Wolfman appeal to the lowest common denominator. Sticking fairly closely to the original material its true potential shines through momentarily in a number of brilliantly realised scenes and overall it is an immensely entertaining, handsome looking film.

At the heart of the story is an exploration of the darker side of human nature. Hopkins’ Talbot Senior pontificates on this concept quite a lot throughout proceedings and eventually drives home the point, just in case we didn’t get it. To be a werewolf is to be stripped of civility and reconnected with dormant primal instincts. Talbot embodies the conflict between human intellect and base instinct.

The film evokes a deliciously dark gothic atmosphere – particularly during the scenes set in the asylum and the Talbot mansion. Danny Elfman’s score, which frequently rekindles memories of Wojciech Kilar's score for Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is also an effective aspect. Curt Siodmak’s poem – especially written for the original film (1941) – even makes an appearance here and stirs up a potent sense of established folklore: ‘Even a man who is pure in heart And says his prayers by night May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms And the autumn moon is bright.’

The cast is top notch and while Hopkins and Blunt aren’t really given much to do, they still manage to breathe life into their characters. While it feels very much like a rudimentary, clichéd sub-plot, the tentative romance between Lawrence and Gwen gradually takes centre stage as a gypsy woman spookily claims the werewolf’s only hope for survival lies in the hands of the woman who loves him. Gwen is resilient and quietly determined and the scene where she pleads for the monster to recognise her as he bears down upon her is unbearably intense – all the more so because of Blunt’s compelling performance. Del Toro endows Talbot with the same heavyset sadness and quiet doom that Lon Chaney Jnr evoked in the character in the original film – a gentle soul trapped in a body raging out of control. Elsewhere they are ably supported by a suave Hugo Weaving as Scotland Yard Inspector Francis Aberline who isn’t so much a character than a plot device to set up a potential sequel.

The look of the monster is genuinely striking. Building on the look of the original wolfman and actually improving and enhancing it with contemporary makeup effects - he still retains the form of a man, but he is not quite a man. The sight of Del Toro skulking through the fog shrouded woods is the stuff of iconic and nightmarish fairy tale imagery. A slight detraction from this is the sight of the werewolf legging it on all fours – like so much in the film, it is too obviously computer generated. Not a lot is made of the transformation sequences – they were actually quite underwhelming. The sound effects of bones cracking and snapping into new and bizarre positions was more effective than the visual aspect – Del Toro’s limbs become elongated and he sprouts hair and fangs while his computer generated face contorts in pain. Whilst not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, these sequences still rely too heavily on CGI that will no doubt look dated in a few years.

Johnston’s direction is competent if a little rudimentary. Like Raimi with Drag Me To Hell, he relies heavily on orchestrated jump moments. Whilst not particularly scary The Wolfman is still specifically designed to keep audiences on their toes and they are jolted into submission at regular intervals. Only occasionally does Johnston flex his ability to create tension and suspense. This is realised very well in the scene when Talbot returns to his home after realising his father’s dark secret and searches the house for him. The culmination is a ridiculous, though admittedly crowd pleasing battle between father and son in front of a roaring fire – made all the more ridiculous by the gesticulations of Hopkins who even tears off his shirt in the most macho-dramatic manner. Think of the wrestling scene in Ken Russell's Women in Love. But with werewolves.

A number of pulse-pounding moments come courtesy of the scene in which the wolfman stalks and violently slays most of the inhabitants of a gypsy campsite and the scene in which Talbot gets all hairy and toothy while trussed up in a lecture theatre full of psychiatrists as they jostle to escape. Homage is also paid to The Werewolf of London in a prolonged rooftop chase scene through the city. The film is incredibly violent – limbs are torn off, heads are knocked off, stomachs are gashed open and entrails ripped out and flung about with wild abandon. Of course it’s all too outlandish to be really disturbing, but it is capably realised nonetheless.

Ferocious and often quite intense, The Wolfman is an entertaining high-Gothic romp, and one I look forward to revisiting again before too long.