FILMEDGE.NET REVIEWS THE WOLFMAN STARRING BENICIO DEL TORO

Director Joe Johnston's affectionate upscaling of the classic Universal horror tale, Lon Chaney's THE WOLF MAN from 1941, celebrates its lycanthropic origins as much as it is constrained by them.  Like its central character, THE WOLFMAN straddles two worlds of being and the transition between them leads to both thrills and problems.  Given how recent films such as the TWILIGHT series have twisted conventions of the horror genre into teen-angst soap opera, THE WOLFMAN provides a most welcome return to the cinematic traditions from which it sprang.  Yet this lavishly produced homage with great creature effects remains limited by this same source which dilutes opportunities for suspense if the audience ultimately knows where it's all going to end.  Solid performances by Benicio del Toro and Emily Blunt are reined in by a script which attempts to interject some original twists into the tale — some pay off while others falter, leaving viewers with a grandly made monster movie that feels familiar in the best and least helpful ways for its own good.  No doubt you've seen this story before, but you've not seen it look this way thanks to Rick Baker's A-plus makeup on what remains a very simple tale under the fur.

Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro) returns to his ancestral home of Blackmoor, England in 1891 after the disappearance of his brother Ben.  Estranged from his father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) since childhood, Lawrence makes the journey back at the request of Ben's fiancee, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt).   Finding his brother's body ripped to pieces, the local villagers blame the transient gypsies for bringing evil to their doorstep but Lawrence suspects that such specific wounds could be caused by an escaped mental patient.  Lawrence knows a bit about such things as his father had him committed in an asylum for a year after Talbot, as a boy, witnessed his mother's suicide.  Such a tragic history provides more than enough motive for locals to consider the Talbot family cursed, and it only gets worse after a fur-and-fangs beast attacks Lawrence while investigating the gypsies.  He survives the attack which only heightens the local's suspicions that he now carries the mark and curse of the beast.  Gwen nurses Lawrence back to health — all too quickly — as Inspector Aberline (Hugo Weaving) investigates the recent murders, applying modern science in place of superstition.  As the full moon arrives, Lawrence transforms into a werewolf and terrible things ensue.  The following morning Lawrence awakens in the woods of his estate, caked in blood and gore, remembering nothing.  Sir John turns in his son to Aberline and Lawrence is once again committed at the asylum for his lethal delusions.  Soon his nightmare is proven real right before Aberline's eyes and the Wolfman escapes into the heart of London to wreak bloody havoc.  The hunt for Lawrence Talbot begins and only Gwen believes she can save him from destruction.  When an even darker secret is revealed, Lawrence must confront his destiny in a fateful battle which only magnifies the Talbot family's fall from grace.

The film's many strengths deliver what genre fans want from a classic wolfman film: foggy English moors and stands of shadowy forest trees giving the beast hundreds of hiding places from which to leap out, chilly autumn skies illuminated by desolate moonlight, and above all a monstrous curse which condemns an innocent man to a bloody fate.  The director with cinematographer Shelly Johnson evoke such gothic staples with bravado and a fresh eye for details which builds eerie moods layer upon layer.  Likewise Rick Heinrichs' production design and art direction by John Dexter and Phil Harvey recreate a luxurious but decayed sense of Britain's empire tainted by the Talbot family curse.  Let's not forget what a highly stylized film Universal's THE WOLF MAN was in 1941, and this modern day upgrade continues that legacy full force.  Unlike the 1931 classics as Tod Browning's DRACULA or James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN, George Waggner's THE WOLF MAN a decade after was created as a tragic fairy tale that turned dream-like imagery into a horrific nightmare its hero could not escape.  THE WOLFMAN follows this same path through the dark wilderness of its hero's soul, blending vivid CG-enhanced images with a brutally visceral unleashing of man's beastly inner nature.  From the dead leaves drifting across the marble floors of Talbot Manor to the gaslamp shadows of London avenues, atmospheric mood abounds setting the proper tone of the werewolf genre in Old World, old school style.

The script by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self fails to innovate enough to make THE WOLFMAN a full-fanged modern classic in its own right.  This is the perilous trick when paying such direct homage to a bona fide horror classic the world has embraced for nearly seven decades: follow too closely and the results are predictable, yet invent too much and the film becomes a revisionist reboot which strays from its source.  Granted this is a difficult and perhaps even thankless task which may only prove it's impossible to please all genre fans all the time.  Indeed, no lasting movie monster series owes more of its own mythology to its cinematic incarnations, specifically Curt Siodmak's 1941 screenplay which invented much of what is considered werewolf lore today. THE WOLFMAN, based on and highly inspired by Siodmak's screen story, is an advancement of what came before it in modern filmmaking context but not quite a beast of its own.  Surprisingly, the same can be said of Danny Elfman's atmospheric but often unmemorable score, which hits all the right moody notes but fails to offer any distinctive themes to distinguish itself or its film as a stand-alone werewolf creation.  His credits proves he's capable of just the opposite outcome, devising catchy and sometimes bombastically dominant themes and motifs in his scores, so I'm quite shocked he created nothing so personally stamped here.

So too does this story lack a sense of personal anguish by Lawrence in his cursed state: being an outsider even in his own family, he has nothing to lose when he suffers what should be his tragic fall.  The backstory informs us he's a great American stage actor but offers no glory from it of which he can be stripped.  He lost any love for his father long ago, and indeed Sir John treats him like the visiting stranger he is now as a man.  Already damaged goods, Lawrence has a much shorter distance to fall when his curse is unleashed.  Kudos to del Toro for his haunted portrayal of Talbot, and at many moments his expression and demeanor evoke the likeness of Lon Chaney's 1941 character which makes an enjoyable callback for fans of the franchise.  Emily Blunt plays Gwen with a tender, earnest fragility though the script never fully develops her character to fill out her romantic subplot with Talbot satisfactorily.  So much of Sir John's character resides in backstory that Hopkins has little blood to pump into the character, making him as distant from the audience as he is his son.  What dramatic energy arrives is too little too late, and such uneven scripting is the film's major weakness.  Sadly the talents of Geraldine Chaplin as Maleva the gypsy, Art Malik as Singh and Hugo Weaving are woefully underutilized as well in their shallowly written supporting roles.  Considering what an indelible mark Maria Ouspenskaya made as Maleva in 1941, this is a shamefully missed opportunity to up the ante.

Conversely, Rick Baker's skills were put to excellent use in his superb makeup wizardry transforming Talbot into the Wolfman — the result is both a brilliant tribute to Jack Pierce's original 1941 design and a innovative, frightening beast unto itself.  Baker's Wolfman is a far cry from his 1981 change-o effects seen in John Landis' AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, though genre fans might argue that the CG-animated transformations here are not necessarily more effective than Baker's practical magic thirty years ago. Insert shots of Talbot's hands, feet and limbs breaking and stretching into wolf form work very well individually, but the rapid-fire morphing of Talbot's face into the beast still call out its animated nature and deflate visual credibility of the other shots.  Unlike so many movie monsters, the werewolf has a bone-crunching reality to its mythology, it's a physical, incredibly painful transformation of man into animal that we at least imagine happening to us.  The CG metamorphosis turning Talbot into the wolf seems hasty and passive by comparison, little more than a silicon-based lap dissolve which is how Chaney sprouted a hairy snout and fans half a century ago.  Baker's on-screen, torturously slow prosthetic transformation had the right idea in 1981, and his creature work atop del Toro's face and body still gets it right today.  Watch for Baker's 12th Oscar nomination in Best Makeup a year from now for his invaluable success bringing the beast to life. 

THE WOLFMAN also succeeds in many crucial areas of extending Universal's genre legend, though an imbalanced script and hyper-fast pacing of werewolf sequences tend to undercut the development of horror in favor of slam-bang action.  If anything, this follows the trend of modern horror films in general which substitute kinetic energy for excitement rather than let real horror build up to maximum effect — a prime poster child of this trend is Stephen Sommers' VAN HELSING and MUMMY films which are utterly action-adventure romps at heart with monsters in lead roles, barely resembling horror cinema at all.  Joe Johnston deserves credit for taking a dozen giant paw-steps away from such diluted genre hybrids, but THE WOLFMAN would be a stronger film if he trusted his story and his monster more, throttled back the pace and left more of the tragic man inside the wolf.   Fans like myself had high expectations for this film and were disappointed when it lost its Fall 2009 release date, a Halloween season debut which this so richly deserved and no doubt would have enjoyed more than its February bow today.   Genre fans will eat it up for the banquet of bloody horror served, though more innovative plotting and suspense would have made the gore all the more gorgeous for us to behold.  THE WOLFMAN needs more heart beating under its fur to become a classic in its own right, even if that heart must be pierced by a silver bullet in the end because — as we all know — that's how the story goes.