Bloody Good Wolfman Worth Howling Over
Lured back to his father Sir John Talbot’s (Anthony Hopkins) estate by a letter written by his missing brother’s distraught fiancée Gwen (Emily Blunt), famed actor Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) is unprepared for the carnage awaiting him. For a monster is stalking the countryside, an animal almost supernatural in its thirst for blood and carnage, and even famed Scotland Yard Investigator Abberline (Hugo Weaving) won’t be able to stop the beast from unleashing its carnivorous fury.
A beast stalks its prey in Universal Studio's The Wolfman
Well, if you’re going to remake an immortal classic – and 1941’s The Wolf Man starring the great Lon Chaney, Jr. is certainly that – than I guess this is the way to do it. With a retooled Victorian era screenplay based on Curt Siodmak’s original treatment written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) and David Self (Road to Perdition) and directed by Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer), this new The Wolfman is a gory treat, and for horror fanatics this is one blood soaked monster movie well worth standing in line for.
In other words I downright loved it. The film not only plays beloved homage to the black and white Universal classic it also evokes fond memories of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, Joe Dante’s The Howling and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is a mixture of both old and new schools with a little bit of Tim Burton Sleepy Hollow-like zaniness thrown in for good measure, and by the time it was over I was almost giddy with gory enthusiasm to see it again.
I do admit things do tend to go off the rails now and again into an insane realm of lunacy that I couldn’t quite tell if was exactly purposeful, and as good as the CGI and makeup effects are in regards to werewolf transformations are concerned the ones revolving around London cityscapes are admittedly cartoonish. I’m also not positive adding Jack the Ripper detective Abberline to the proceedings works all that well, and while Weaving has some of the film’s most delicious lines his presence truthfully isn’t all that necessary.
Not that I honestly care about any of this. The truth of the matter is that I had such a glorious time watching this remake my nitpicky problems with portions here and there vanished like a full moon behind a cloudy sky. Johnston is in such complete control of the proceedings I felt like he was mischievously dangling me at the end of his extended claw like a lamb ready for the slaughter. This is quite possibly the best directorial job of the man’s journeyman career, and not since 1999’s October Sky have I felt this keen about both his talents and his potential.
This isn’t going to come as a surprise but this full throttle take on the material isn’t going to be for everyone. The film almost seemed to be engineered to excite genre fans who thrilled to works like John Carpenter’s version of The Thing or Neil Marshall’s The Descent. It goes straight for the jugular (at times quite literally) and makes no pretense that it is going to try and do anything else. While there is suspense the ultimate point is to put the pedal to the metal and in order to terrify. Subtlety isn’t exactly embraced, and those looking for the tension to slowly build better prepare themselves for disappointment.
I loved the transformation scenes. Oscar-winner Rick Baker has been responsible for some of the best werewolves ever put to film and while his makeup effects don’t pack quite the same wallop as they did during that Credence Clearwater Revival song and dance in An American Werewolf in London that still doesn’t make them any less impressive. While the final product bares an uncanny resemblance to the Lon Chaney, Jr. version you can still tell it’s Del Toro underneath all the prosthetics, the actor finding the balance between his humanity and his animalistic nature all while rampaging malignly through the woods.
Additional plusses include Shelly Johnson’s (The House Bunny) suitably macabre cinematography and Rick Heinrichs’ (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End) gorgeously malevolent production design. But the real star in my opinion is composer Danny Elfman’s (Batman, The Kingdom) boisterous score. It reminded me in many ways of Wojciech Kilar’s miraculous music for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the orchestra speaking in a voice so stirring it improves everything around it. I seriously doubt the scares would be as solid or the terror as gruesome if not for Elfman’s arias, and like Halloween or Jaws this is one horror movie that owes its composer a thank you card.
I am a monster movie aficionado and live for films like this one, and while I admittedly see a heck of a lot of them it is rare for any in this genre to officially knock my socks off, especially if they’re a remake of a beloved masterpiece. But Johnston’s The Wolfman did that and then some. Even when things became so silly I should have laughed the director had my so firmly ensconced within his hairy paw I was willing to go just about anywhere he wanted to take me. This is the kind of movie that makes me howl at the moon in joyful exultation, and if Universal wanted to make their immortal monsters sing once again they’ve started their journey back into the moors on the right foot.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
