THE WOLF MAN review: all bite and no bark
THE WOLF MAN review: all bite and no bark
Feb 11
The original Wolf Man was a noble tale of tragedy, fathers and sons, and fate, intertwined with some wacky gypsy woo-woo bullshit. Something about curses, pure hearts, and gypsies really didn’t bode well for our innocent protagonist Larry Talbot, and he ended up snuffing it by taking a silver cane to the face a few too many times. What was tragic about the film was that was that a) everything Larry goes through was foretold by gypsies with their woo-woo magic, b) there was nothing Larry or his loved ones could do to assuage his condition, and c) it was his father that had to heroically save the day and bludgeon his poor soon to death. The original Wolf Man is a lean 67 minutes, and even though it’s in black-and-white and the language is all stiff and funny, it still manages to wring more emotion from its premise than does the subject of this review, the 2010 remake helmed by mid-tier Hollywood director Joe Johnston.
This Wolf Man is considerably longer than its namesake, unnecessarily convoluted and obtuse, boring for long tracts of its length, and altogether strange to watch. The film starts about four times — we start on the moon, fade to a tombstone, get some anonymous voice-over reading the epitaph in case the audience is too stupid to read it for themselves, cut to a werewolf attack scene that gets cut off midway, and then, out of nowhere, the title of the film drifts past. Er, what? Four quick, short hiccups is a bad way to start a film, but then it crashes into what appears to be the second act. The music is overbearing and overused, none of the scenes start or end properly, and when Benicio Del Toro finally shows up, every action he takes and every line he utters seems to carry nothing but a bored inevitability.
This first half hour of the Wolf Man is probably the weakest, so I guess it’s good that it’s at the front. There is a werewolf attack sequence towards the end of the first act that actually serves as the film’s hook (too little, too late), and it’s from this point on that we have a good idea where this film is headed: that’s right, Joe Johnston’s Wolf Man is on a one-way freight train straight to Mindless Brutal Gore Town. Seeing people’s arms getting torn off and guts yanked out as they scream and whimper is actually a relief after the half hour of droning and confusing family drama preceding it.
From this point on it’s just the waiting game, whereby you wait for Larry to turn lycan and tear people limb from limb. It’s certainly admirable that Johnston and the screenwriters chose to focus as much as possible on quiet dialogue scenes, but none of said scenes make any real sense or contribute to the narrative as a whole, and rather than using them to build up any kind of suspense, Joe Johnston just keeps throwing jump-scare after jump-scare at us until we become completely immune to them.
The film feels like it’s been in post-production far too long, and Johnston appears to have lost sight of whatever it was he set out to do. Almost all the scenes in the film feel chopped to pieces, lacking a coherent intent or purpose, and they all start and / or end in jarring places. The music is well composed and suitable but way overused, and it never seems to fit the flow or tone of the scene it’s blaring over. It seems like there was once a coherent, linear script, but that it got thrown out of the window once shooting was completed. The film makes several improbably jumps in time and space that are not only jarring, but hard to follow. There are at least four full moons in the movie, but in movie la-la land, time means nothing, and so Larry is asleep, in a mental institution, or walking to the other side of the country for 27 days out of every month so we get as many transformations as possible in as many different places. The movie would have benefited significantly if it had focused on Larry’s first transformation, and taken place over the course of precisely one night, rather than the entire season it takes to resolve the plot.
For the sake of spoilers I won’t discuss the attempted “shock” twist in the middle, but once you realise there might be another werewolf running around the countryside, your mind leaps to the foregone conclusion (dictated by Movie Law) that the two werewolves will fight it out tooth and nail before the credits roll. I couldn’t help but think of Van Helsing at this point — really, fighting werewolves? In an otherwise self-serious, dialogue-laden film?
There isn’t a single joke in this movie. Nobody laughs, and the only person who smiles is Larry’s bonkers dad Sir John, and his is the creepy smile of the mentally deranged. There is nothing pleasant or exciting about the visual style. Following the recent trend in Hollywood to suck any and all colour out of any movie ever made, the Wolf Man comes at us in shades of brown, grey and black. Even the blood (of which there is a lot) looks like barbecue sauce, and Emily Blunt’s character spends the whole movie traipsing around in black dresses, with the occasional navy blue corset. Every now and then we get a glimpse of some non-unpleasant countryside, or a sunset, or some blue sky, but that glimpse of fresh visuals is immediately stifled by the proceeding night time scenes. Who started this trend, and when will it die?
As far as performances are concerned, everyone gets a pass, except for Hugo Weaving, who gets a hearty pat on the back and a timid request for a performance of “Mr Anderson.” Hugo Weaving eats this movie for breakfast. Every scene with him in it is a joy, every scene without him is a chore. Anthony Hopkins gives it his all, but his character is so stupid, so obtuse, so unfathomable and unmotivated that it’s hard to take him seriously. His role flips between protector, mentor, villain, and exposition-dumping device (with never so much as an inkling of motivation) so fast you can’t get a handle on the slippery character.
Benicio Del Toro sleepwalks through the film. He doesn’t even resemble his movie father or brother, he’s just … Benicio Del Toro, dialled down to the lowest common denominator; his character could have been played by any one of the many interchangeable Hollywood leading men. The script really lets him down, though. There is a touch of darkness to Larry Talbot 2010 that is hinted at, but the guy never gets anything to do. As usual in Hollywood, the sensible solution of euthanasia is swept under the rug, obviating a potentially interesting discussion on the ethics of assisted suicide, the difference between animals and non-human animals, and the importance of carrying on your father’s legacy in favour of a hideously forced romance. The only thing the screenwriters give Larry to do is wait. Kill time between full moons. There’s never a choice on his part to seek a cure or suicide, and without conflicting choices, there is no drama.
Emily Blunt plays her small, dull character very well, but again, her character has nothing to do. I think there are at least three scenes in the film where she professes her passionate desire to help Larry. First of all, your fiance dies, and then his brother shows up and starts cracking onto you, and you repay that sleaziness with a willingness to sacrifice your own life? Why is she helping this guy? Secondly, in every one of the several scenes in which she claims to want to find a cure, whoever she’s talking to politely but firmly informs her that there is no cure. So when the next scene comes around in which she demands to be allowed to find a cure somewhere, you’re just rolling your eyes and saying “load up the silver bullet already, will ya?”
So nobody really has anything to do in the film. No real choices to make, no real sacrifices or burdens. The only thing going for it is the action. Luckily, the action isn’t as godawful as the rest of the movie. It’s kinetic, past-paced, visceral, and staged pretty well, although it suffers from the same problem as the rest of the film: all the action scenes end far too abruptly to make a real impact on the story. The make-up effects are awesome, possibly some of the best werewolf work in a long time. Johnston scores points for minimising the CGI as well, reserving it mainly for the transformation scenes and some of the running / jumping stuff. The violence is brutal and inventive and, if you’re a sucker for gore, you’ve got a real winner here.
How would I fix the Wolf Man? Cut out the brother character, and get rid of all that hogwash about the father being dodgy and the mother committing suicide — focus on Larry. Open the film with his performance of Hamlet, show his fun side, get to know him as a person. Show him backstage congratulated by his fellow actors, and have him complain about having to visit his stodgy old father while he’s in town. Have him grudgingly visit his father, and then send him to the local town. Maybe he wanders into an antiques store, meets a pretty girl, buys a silver-headed walking cane so he can flirt with the girl some more. Cut out the gypsies altogether and get him into the woods, where he can use the cane to save the girl from a wolf, but gets bitten in the process. Keep him bedridden for three and a half weeks, but have him up and about in time for the full moon. Have the villagers congratulate him for felling the wild beast, and make it seem like everything’s going his way.
But then! The full moon comes out and Larry goes ape-shit. He kills everyone and everything in his path to get to the local antiques girl (work in something about how being cursed amplifies your animal desires), and stage an extended scene of brutal violence in which wolf Larry kills half the village. Luckily Larry’s dad knows the score, and brings the silver cane to try and jog the beast’s memory. Sir John catches up with Larry just before he reaches the girl (by now he’s killed most of the villagers, though — oh well). Sir John ends up having to use the cane not to jog his son’s memory, but to slog his son’s brain. To mush. The few survivors gather round and Sir John weeps as the dead wolf turns back into his son. The end. There you go, you get your romance, your violence, and your tragedy, all in one tight package set mostly in a single night.
That might be the Wolf Man of my dreams, but that’s not the Wolf Man we got. If you hate gore and movie violence, then there’s nothing for you here. If you enjoy period pieces, the anachronistic colloquiallisms and dark, drab cinematography with almost certainly grit your shit. If you like horror you’ll probably get bored by the constant and ineffective jump-scares (you only get one per film before they become ineffective — ask Steven Spielberg) and the complete lack of suspense or actual horror. If you like plots that make sense or consistent, motivated characters, you should probably give it a miss as well. But if you’re happy to forget you have a brain for a while, or you’re thrilled by the sight of shameless, exploitative evisceration, or you’re a really big Del Toro / Hopkins fan, this movie might score a pass for you.
The Wolf Man score
37/100
