It's Hammer Time for Neo-Gothic "The Wolfman"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 12 February 2010 05:00

Written by Maitland McDonagh / Miss FlickChick

Directed by: Joe Johnston
Written by: Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, based on the 1941 screenplay by Curt Siodmak
Starring: Benecio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Bunt, Hugo Weaving, Art Malik, Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Sher, Michael Cronin, Roger Frost

Much delayed and dogged, if you will, by dark rumors of reshoots and escalating speculation that it was shaping up to be greater disaster than Van Helsing (2004), Universal Pictures' last high-profile attempt to leverage its legendary classic-horror library for the modern marketplace, The Wolfman is a pleasant surprise simply by virtue as awful as you might expect. It's a handsomely mounted throwback to Hammer's gothic frightfests — the action is even pushed back to fifty years before that of the iconic Lon Chaney Jr. film The Wolf Man (1941), which was set in the then-present day — that wears its R rating proudly and ignores current fashions in lovestruck monsters trapped in gloomy-doom romances with misunderstood teenagers. Say what you will about Benecio del Toro's Lawrence Talbot: He may be tormented, but he's no dreamy emo boy; when he broods, the sky darkens.
 
1891, Blackmoor, England: Estranged from his father and haunted by memories of his mother's brutal murder, acclaimed actor Lawrence Talbot hasn't been home since he was a child. But a letter from his younger brother Ben's fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), compels his return: Ben is missing and she fears the worst. Lawrence's father, larger-than-life big-game hunter Sir John  (Anthony Hopkins), greets him with practiced scorn — "the prodigal son returns," drawls Sir John, leaving no doubt that fatted calf is not on tonight's menu — and bad news: Ben's mutilated corpse has been pulled from a ditch somewhere on the rambling, half-wild Talbot estate.
 
The locals blame the gypsies, who set up camp with their dogs, ragged children and performing bear shortly before Ben disappeared. The gypsies murmur darkly amongst themselves and Scotland Yard's notorious Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving), the man who failed to catch Jack the Ripper, has been dispatched from London to investigate. Lawrence, driven by the inchoate conviction that Ben's death and his own inner demons are connected to dark Talbot-family secret, begins to make his own inquiries, which are met by the locals with a mix of obsequious courtesy and ill-concealed suspicion. He may be Blackmoor-born, but young Lawrence was sent to an insane asylum after his mother's death, then fobbed off on American relatives — he's as good as a stranger, and Backmoor isn't the kind of place that welcomes strangers.
 
And that's before Lawrence is viciously savaged by some  huge animal while poking around the gypsy encampment, sustaining injuries that should by all rights have killed him.  His miraculous — some might say unnatural — recovery smacks of devilishness.
 
Is The Wolfman scary? No. Does it acknowledge and respect classic werewolf-movie traditions? That would be a big yes, right down to special-effects makeup legend Rick Baker's decision to use as his inspiration Jack Pierce's two-legged, modestly-muzzled wolf man make-up as his inspiration — Rick Baker, the guy who almost single-handedly changed the face of cinematic lycanthropy with An American Werewolf in London (1981). It's sweet, in a geeky kind of way, a bow to a genre pioneer by a fanboy big enough to do whatever he damned well pleases. But the look is totally old-fashioned and unlikely to make horror fans under the age of 50 howl with delight… snotty derision, more like it.
 
Hopkins has his usually high old time playing the imperious Sir John, who sweeps around his gloomy manor house in a tiger-trimmed dressing gown, trailed by a Sikh retainer (Art Malik) and a snarling hound. The swarthy del Toro was born to play a wolfish man (if not Hopkins' son, raven-haired mother notwithstanding), and the supporting cast suitably colorful. The trouble is that there's really no point: Screenwriters Walker and Self are clever, but for all the new trappings — making Lawrence an actor, whom we first glimpse performing Hamlet; some hellish asylum scenes; and adding Abberline to the mix — this Wolfman is ultimately thin beer in a handsome glass.

For more by Maitland McDonagh: MissFlickChick.com

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