The Wolfman

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***


The Wolfman is a very earnest remake, with few of the self-conscious conceits of modern horror movies. Which is both good and bad. As a period piece, it enables us to watch without inserting a lot of our own biases and preconceptions on the story and characters. However, anything that does remind us of our own lives then pulls at the suspension of disbelief necessary to watch a film based on the supernatural.

Such things as Benicio Del Toro's accent. The story about an English kid sent to live in America would naturally make the audience pay attention to the way he talks, and when you scrutinize Del Toro's speech, you realize he gets about a B+ on accent, but this still leaves about 10% of the familiar actor you know. Or Anthony Hopkins' history. This is a guy whose most familiar role is a psychopathic cannibal; any nods to that in a movie about characters who lose control and eat humans are jarring.

The film is really well acted, and the story, while predictable, is well-told, with plenty of suspense, and empathetic characters. I could have done with a little lighter hand on the stuff that was meant to be suspenseful. There are no literal cat scares, but we get bird scares and dog scares and plenty of stuff put in to make us jump because of loud sound editing. The gore is amped up to eleven, with very graphic maulings, disembowelings, and beheadings, showing just about every way a body part can be damaged and/or severed by a set of claws and/or fangs.

A theme touched on briefly in the film is the question of whether lycanthropy is all in the brain. When we first meet Hugo Weaving's character, we learn he had previously investigated "The Ripper," and is convinced the crimes he is now investigating are similar. This is mentioned, then forgotten. I would have loved more of this, which would have meant more of Hugo Weaving, which is never a bad thing. When Del Toro's character is captured and sent to the asylum, his "doctors" are convinced he is a psycho, that he believes he's a werewolf but is really just a maniac whose delusions are triggered by the moon. This would have been a very interesting angle to pursue; if the audience was left with a question of exactly how much control a werewolf might have over its actions, how much man is left inside a wolf-man? A third instance of this is the 'origin' backstory; the first character to be infected with the wolf virus, as it were, has much more choice in the matter, and much more fault, and it could have been very interesting to see the character struggle with the blame for subsequent events. Even if it didn't fit in the current story line, it would have made for a richer backstory, and richer character development.