A Few Thoughts on THE WOLFMAN (2010)

UPDATED 2/16/2010! Now with even MORE nitpicking! (See end of review)

Everyone around here knows (or should know by now) how important George Waggner's THE WOLF MAN (1941) is to your ever-lovin' Vicar, as both a piece of horror cinema history and a formative influence in my own personal journey that has led me to where I am today, which is to say right in front of your eyes spouting forth on the glories of all that is MAD at the movies. You also should know that I don't spend an awful lot of time writing about new-release movies on this blog, partly because I prefer to walk the ornate, psychedelically painted halls of 70s exploitation and neon-lit corridors of 80s sci-fi horror. However, because THE WOLF MAN is such an important movie to me, I felt it appropriate that I take a few minutes to talk about the Universal remake and my reaction to it.

The requisite disclaimer/spoiler warning: if you are planning to see Joe Johnston's THE WOLFMAN (2010) in the near future, I encourage you to skip this piece of writing and go in fresh; knowing as I do that cinematic enjoyment is an intensely personal rubric, and that one man's trash is another's treasure, I would hate to color someone's reaction when that person might otherwise have a great time with the movie. Which is not to say that I hated it--but I did have problems with it, which I plan to detail briefly below (along with the things I thought it did well). So caveat lector--don't say I didn't warn you.

The net by now is lousy with plot summaries and comparisons, so instead of subjecting you to all that, I think I'll just go through my likes and dislikes in list format. If you need a refresher on the original movie, I encourage you to check out my lengthy Halloween Monster Memories piece on THE WOLF MAN, seen here in October of 2008.

Things I liked about THE WOLFMAN (2010):

• I thought the movie looked fantastic. The gloomy gothic of Talbot Manor and the surrounding perpetually fog-shrouded woods, the period costuming, the silver/grey color scheme that largely (and appropriately) called to mind both the black & white original and the silvery light of the moon--all gorgeous.
• Rick Baker's makeup design for the Wolfman was, I thought, dead-on. Respectful to the original while updating it and making it more vicious and frightening--no complaints. I've read several places that they wanted Del Toro to be able to *act* under all that makeup, and I think they succeeded. And despite the sometimes iffy CG transitions, I did like the half-biped/half-quadriped locomotion of the creature.
• I don't know if they were entirely intentional, but I think I spotted at least two nods to the werewolf lore of permanent Vicar hero Paul Naschy, which were greatly appreciated at least by me. First, they give lip service to the Naschylore that the werewolf can only be set free by someone who loves him, though thereafter they really don't go much further with it. And in a show-stopping massacre scene, there is a definite instance of Human Jerky a la Jacinto, which again had me smiling and nodding my head.
• There were also a couple of definitely intentional nods to what I've always considered a tonal remake of The Wolf Man, i.e. American Werewolf in London, which Rick Baker also worked on of course. The first is the appearance early on of David Schofield, the Dart Player from the Slaughtered Lamb in AWIL, playing a similar pub-goer role. The second is the Wolfman's rampage in London, which despite period setting hits a lot of analogous notes as the Picadilly Circus sequence from the earlier flick. (Nota bene: Rick Baker himself makes a brief cameo as the first killed onscreen by a werewolf.)
• That London rampage? Excellent. Again, there was some iffy CG tansitioning going on, but the werewolf going crazy on the steam-powered double-decker, taking off over the rooftops of London, and generally wreaking havoc? Fantastic, exciting stuff, imo.
• Emily Blunt as Gwen Conliffe was probably hired because she looks so beautiful when she cries, as she's called upon to turn on the water-works in just about every scene. This is not a bad thing--she's gorgeous, believably bereaved and confused, and turns in my favorite performance of the flick.
• I liked that the werewolf was so solid and weighty here--not light and airy like the vampires we see in modern flicks who barely seem to touch to floor. This creature rages, slams into things, knocks trees over, and makes a lot of noise. I appreciate that.
  

Things I didn't like quite so much:

• One of the central themes for me of the whole werewolf mythos is the tragedy of a good man who is driven to do evil and cannot stop himself. Werewolf movies suffer, imo, when they forget this or give it short shrift. We get to see quite a lot of Lon Chaney Jr. being a good if misguided man in the original (too much, some might say), which makes his drive to kill all the more tragic. Benecio Del Toro's Lawrence Talbot *is* meant to be a good man, but his development as such is all done in shorthand. In fact, this is a problem with ALL the character develpment in the movie--rather than learning about the characters by how they interact, we get shorthand versions of their motivations, either through summarizing dialogue or flashbacks. Some viewers will like this better than the build-up of the original, but for me it just seemed lazy.
• Speaking of lazy--those flashbacks and dream sequences. Far too many, far too often. I would have preferred sacrificing the scenes of Larry and Ben as kids for some more character development, perhaps using the same narrative but told by the characters rather than flashback. This would have helped Larry and Gwen's later relationship become more moving as well, I think. And that long dream sequence in the asylum? I know there's a similar scene at the carnival in the original, but the new one is bigger, longer, flashier, and dumber. I could have done with less of that.
• Speaking of the asylum--wtf? This is probably my biggest problem with the flick--again, in the original, Larry murders the grave digger and becomes aware of his situation before anyone else. When he tries to convince his father and the town that he's a monster, no one belives him, thinking instead he's disturbed. Here, however, the townspeople light up their torches and march on the house demanding Larry's cursed hide BEFORE HE EVEN TRANSFORMS FOR THE FIRST TIME. There is NOBODY in the town who DOESN'T believe Larry is the Beast, and yet when they capture him after a huge massacre in which he does away with at least half a dozen townspeople and everyone sees him wolfed out, what do they do? SEND HIM TO THE ASYLUM for treatment. In the context of the original story in which Larry might well be a lunatic, that would work; but here it's just nonsensical.
• The dialogue, frankly, was horrible. Del Toro, Hopkins, Blunt and Weaving do their best with what they have, but when your lines are MORE melodramatic and stilted than lines from your 60-year-old source material? You've got a major problem there.
• We needed more gypsies. I mean, A LOT more gypsies.
  

And finally (MAJOR SPOILER HERE--TURN BACK NOW!)--the double-werewolf dynamic. I'm of two minds about this one--on the one hand, I LOVED the final battle in the burning Talbot manse, as it reminded me again of the monster mashes Naschy and I both love so well, and was exciting and interesting and bloody. On the other hand, it replaces the tension between Sir John and Larry in the 1941 flick--Dad thinks his son just needs to man-up and stop believing folklore--with "Dad is a remorselessly evil killing machine and wants his son to take the fall for him." I didn't mind the idea itself--I thought it could have been used a lot more effectively than it was, though. Also, I didn't like Hopkins' dead-eyed performance, while I understood the reasons for it.

I could go on for a while about the things I liked and didn't like (the nods to the original with the Wolf's Head Cane and dad's telescope, for instance), but I think that's enough for now. In all, I didn't think it was terrible, but I didn't think it was all that great either, and I believe the 3/5 star, "C" ratings you're seeing all over the net are probably about right.

Of course I fully cop to the fact that my love for the original may well color my enjoyment of the new one, and I might enjoy it more if I could just separate myself from Chaney and Rains and view the flick on its own merits. But I'm not so sure--there's a lot of flash at the expense of substance, which seems to be the curse of our blockbuster age.

Anyway, YMMV as always. I'll be interested to hear what other parishioners think.

Bunnies,
The Vicar

EDITED TO ADD: As I've thought more about the film since my weekend viewing, another problem has occurred to me I wanted to add to this review. (And apologies to the blogs I've already posted this on in comment form--it takes me a while to get my thoughts in order sometimes.) One thing the new film misses that made the old film so compelling to me is Larry Talbot's crushing sense of guilt for having the blood of innocents on his hands. In the 1941 version this starts when Larry attends Bela the Gypsy's funeral and is clearly emotionally distraught at the idea he may have inadvertently killed a man and not a wolf--even though he's pretty sure he killed a wolf! Later, after the gravedigger's death, he's completely destroyed by the knowledge that every time the moon rises he'll go out and kill again--and worse, that no one around him will believe him or help him stop it.

In the new film, with the villagers mobbing up for his hide before he even wolfs out the first time, his later bloodshed seems less like wanton slaughter and more like self-defense. I never got the feeling that Del Toro's Talbot was that worried about having killed so many innocent people--rather, his torment seemed based on the fact that he was being hunted down by them. It's an important difference, I think, and works to the new film's detriment imo.

At the end of the day, though, the film is just okay--I guess I'm mostly disappointed b/c I was hoping it would be "great."