You’ve probably heard me rail long and loud against the remake, for the most part, because it’s so often little more than a sleazy cash grab perpetrated by a Hollywood so bereft of balls that it won’t actually take a chance on anything new any more.
But in this case, I can’t help but approve. Why? Because it holds closely to the original.
Sharing a good chunk of the plotline with the original, The Wolfman features the Talbot family, landed gentry in somewhere around turn of the century England. Lawrence Talbot, the prodigal of the Talbot family, returns home following the mysterious and brutal death of his brother. Now, Lawrence is left to discover what happened to his brother, and learn a bit more about why everyone is so thoroughly convinced that the Talbot family is cursed.
Turns out it’s because they ARE cursed.
I’m not sure what everyone’s big problem with this movie was–I hear The Wolfman’s trending down around New Moon territory on Rotten Tomatoes–because frankly, I found it solidly done with plenty of good scares and a few laughs beside. Oh, sure, it’s not as good as it COULD have been–frankly, when that doctor went out the window in the asylum, he needed to go FLYING–but it was still pretty well done.
This is what remakes really SHOULD be about, folks–the original plot left mostly in tact, with a fresh coat of special effects paint applied to it. The old stuff was scary because no one had ever seen a movie before. But you keep that old style storytelling and ramp it out with modern era effects and you’ll likely get the same effect. Even I, a trained horror veteran, was a little freaked out by this rampaging furball.
There’s so much to like about The Wolfman that it’s hard to tell that this is a remake of a movie that’s been in the freezer so long over at Universal that it should’ve been completely inedible. Like I said, there are plenty of great jump scares, and even a few good laughs. It doesn’t surprise me that the movie’s original release date was back last November, because this really would’ve gone well around Halloween. But the delays were worth it, as the movie really does look intense and brilliant.
As for the acting, both Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins do a terrific job here, and backed up by Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving means that the whole cast is putting forth a good effort.
Still though, I had a whole lot of fun with this movie. Those who think it’s a bad movie–as I’m increasingly seeing–probably just don’t know how bad movies can truly get. when you catch on to that little nugget you develop a whole new appreciation for Hollywood’s merely unpleasant.
The Screenhead Ten Scale shares my frustration on this, and thus we hand out a seven out of ten to The Wolfman–a movie that could’ve been better, but could have been so very much worse.
Popularity: unranked [?]
