The Wolfman
In the same way that it’s funny seeing a dog wearing clothes, there is something amusing about a wolfed-up Benicio Del Toro still wearing a suit.

The vampire market has seen something of a resurgence of late. Like Dracula himself emerging from the dark recesses of his coffin, the genre has risen to the forefront, from the teen-angst of the twilight series to the more overt eroticism of True Blood. With a list that includes, but is not limited to, Daybreakers, Being Human and, now, The Vampire Diaries, it is hard to have not seen at least one pair of fangs in the last few months. It is inevitable, then, that Universal would turn their heads to other forties horror icons; in this case The Wolf Man.

Although past werewolves have not been as obviously sexualised as the more recent vampire-offerings, they are often motivated by the concept of love. In Werewolf of London, widely acknowledged as the first werewolf film and a precursor to the original Wolf Man, the wolf kills the woman he loves after finding her with her ex-partner. This motif has been continued in further werewolf films.

In The Wolfman, Benicio Del Toro is Lawrence Talbot (with an American accent) who returns home to his father (Anthony Hopkins with a broad Welsh accent) following the death of his brother and promises his brother’s widow, Gwen (Emily Blunt with an English accent), that he will find out who or what murdered him.

Putting aside the apparent melting pot of accents, the town is seemingly cursed by a werewolf on every appearance of the full moon. Lawrence goes looking for the beast, is bitten and starts to realise he is becoming the wolf man of the film’s title. A Scotland Yard investigator (Weaving) sticks his nose in and Emily Blunt hangs around long enough to instigate a love story that is far more erratic than it is erotic. Seemingly just days after her husband’s (and his brother’s) gruesome murder, Gwen quickly falls in love with Lawrence even though he does NOTHING to warrant this other than turn into a wolf. You would think that the fact that he is becoming the very thing that killed her husband would put her off.

The romance ensues after a cringingly woeful scene in which he helps her learn how to skim stones by putting his arm around her and guiding her (like you would imagine someone showing you how to shoot pool). This produced groans of laughter from the audience and, unfortunately, was the first of many unintentionally funny moments in the film; others included a hand pulling the trigger on a gun after it had been ripped apart, dangerously bad dialogue (“Rules are all that keeps us from a dog eat dog world”) and the recurrence of a character that must have been based on Gollum (given that it looked almost exactly like him) which was later weakly explained as a feral child. And, in the same way that it’s funny seeing a dog wearing clothes, there is something amusing about a wolfed-up Benicio Del Toro still wearing a suit. It kind of drains the horror from the scene when all you can think of is Fantastic Mr Fox and canine fashion shows.

The only thing more haphazard than the love story were the weather conditions. The film seemed to incorporate a technique from low budget television shows when they explain the transition from night to day by showing the moon going down and the sun going up at speed.

At the heart of the problem with the film is that there is not enough character development to care about Lawrence or believe his love. You know very little about his past other than he witnessed his mother’s death and then went to an asylum in America. There is no emotion, no empathy, no reason to like him and, as a result, it is hard to be affected by his plight.

It is equally difficult to understand the motivation of the werewolf; the attacks are certainly not motivated by sex or love. This one is rabidly bloodthirsty for any flesh he can get his claws on. There is no evidence that the wolf is hungry, nor does he even hate who he kills…he just kills them.

There are some redeeming elements to the film. Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving both have an ominous presence about them that makes the film watchable. Blunt is also good, as are many of the supporting actors but they are simply fulfilling the roles they are given and it is the roles, not the acting, that are bad.

The score seems to be built around making people jump every five minutes. There is not a scene that goes by without an attempt at a shock crammed in at the end. I can already see the inevitable YouTube video montage based on the amount of times the music rushes to an impending climax. It was like reading a Dan Brown book without plot twists or watching Lost without the enigma.

There are some nods to the original. The film opens with the poem that was used throughout the 1941 version and the silver wolf-headed staff is utilised but not quite in the same fashion.

There is something strange in the CGI in that it just isn’t quite as polished as in other films. There was so much smoke at times that it almost felt on the verge of becoming a spoof. I often felt I was watching an episode of Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place or a bigger budget version of Doctor Who. The ultimate impression being that the film and the technology within it will age quickly.

There is enough vampire-fare out there to hold off a resurgence of the werewolf genre for a few more years. In the meantime, I will be hoping and praying that a sexed-up Frankenstein doesn’t come crawling from the graveyard.