The Alchemist, March 2, 2010, Volume 3, No. 113
Vol. 3, No. 113
A Little Bark and a Lot of Bite
The Wolfman Review
The Wolfman is a film with many drawbacks, especially a script lacking in style and substance, and an overall feel of being forced.
Let’s start with a horror movie checklist.
- Scary? Check. You’ll definitely jump in your seat.
- Blood and gore? Check. The deaths and various inner organs were excellent.
- Prize actors? Check. Right down to the damsel in distress.
- A period setting? Overdone and overpriced, but check.
- Everything the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000 looked for when they chose a movie? Check and double check.
This is the werewolf film that movie studios wished they could have made 70 years ago. If all your looking for in a horror film was on that checklist, stop reading now and avoid a few spoilers. Just go see the movie, it will be worth it.
Director Joe Johnston made some interesting choices on this film. First and foremost is the make-up and effects. A veteran of creature effects, he even did the final designs for Yoda and Boba Fett for Star Wars, it should be no surprise that the severed limbs, gruesome deaths, and fields of bloodshed looked great. However, Johnston stuck with makeup and suits for most of the movie. This isn’t a bad thing when the wolfman is on the move, but when he is still, or morphing, the CGI effects just seem tacked on. The CGI effects aren’t bad by themselves, they just don’t mesh well with the make-up jobs. All right, sometimes they are just plain bad. Watching the wolfman sprinting on his hind legs is more laughable than fear-inspiring.
One of the most successful scenes of the film is also the most predictable; picture thirty men locked in a room with a wolfman and see where your imagination takes you. This segues the movie into a wild rampage through London that felt very reminiscent of watching a T-Rex rampage through San Diego, a scene Johnston certainly studied before he directed Jurassic Park III.
There are two quirky ideas added to the old werewolf tale in The Wolfman, one turned out well and the other did not. An officer of the law is ever-present in these stories, and sometimes they display enough intelligence to defend the gypsies instead of leading the attack, but none have ever been so clever as Abberline. Played by Hugo Weaving, he is an officer from Scotland Yard sent to solve the mystery. Abberline is a smarter-than-average detective that is very modern in his thinking, complete with very clever wolfman-hunting tactics. The only drawback is his Australian accent, but it is easy to lose the sound of it among myriad English accents throughout the film, or lack thereof.
The other, ill-fated idea is too much of a spoiler to fully explain. The story smartly treads lightly over the origin of werewolves in general, but adds far too much complexity to the life of the current wolfman. Let’s just say that one wolfman and a lot of humans makes for a blood-filled, scary scene. Wolfman versus wolfman action on the other hand, especially in their silly suits, isn’t great.
The ups and downs aside, Benicio Del Toro as the main character, Lawrence Talbot, and Anthony Hopkins as his father, Sir John Talbot, both have commanding screen presence. Emily Blunt plays a perfect confused love interest as Gwen Conliffe. The sets are convenient and often too embellished, but still manage to satisfy the requirements of being dark and dreary. The story takes a few departures from the norm, but ends with the usual moment of sad redemption and, in this case, an audience calling for the characters to rain down the silver bullets.
All the elements you could want in a classic horror film are here, just don’t look for anything deeper than that. The Wolfman is not destined to be a classic itself, not unless Mystery Science Theater 3000 returns.
C+
~Robin Canfield
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Hugo Weaving doesn’t remotely have an Australian accent in this film… he doesn’t have a strong Australian accent in real life either, because his parents are English and he grew up in various parts of Britain. There are a lot of varied British accents in the film (several of them from Anthony Hopkins alone, not that it matters) but Weaving’s in authentic. He still has family in that part of England.
I disagree. Not with your historical account of Weaving, but with your opinion on his accent (and your poor diction). I never said it was a movie-ruining accent, just that it was there, and that it was easily lost among the many other accents. It is there though.
Family history has nothing to do with the voice of a well-practiced actor, anyway. I’m sure Mel Gibson can turn on an Australian accent whenever he likes, just as I’m sure the accent Hugo Weaving used in Wolfman was of his own choosing – the director obviously didn’t care. Perhaps Weaving was aiming for something else, something special perhaps, but I’m only interested in how it came across.