The Wolfman

Viewer Rating:Justin has rated The Wolfman rating: 2 Star

This is a bad film; but not an uninteresting one. I found myself remaking it in my head shot by shot as it went along, imagining how exciting the art department office must have looked during pre-production. The magnificent production drawings tacked to the office walls, the model sets, the costume sketches and reference photographs. We live in a golden age of production design which goes unnoticed because the films themselves are often so poor. Some of the moon-lit ruins might be from a Caspar David Friedrich painting. The production design of Talbot Hall (dead leaves carpet the floors, gate posts lack surrounding walls) tells us that Nature has invaded this house, and it has won.

The ONLY thing wrong with the film is pacing. This is the responsibility of the director and editor. Yet this is a huge part of what makes a film work or not. I kept spacing out some of the scenes in my head, modulating the pace, including empty moments, protracted silences, silence.

The choice to make the title character half-man, half-wolf was a huge mistake in 1994's WOLF and it's a huge mistake here. Since the half-human form doesn't communicate any better than any other animal, its only effect is to make the whole enterprise feel hokey. In common with modern films who depict powerful creatures fighting, people and objects are thrown around with such ease that the over-use of wire-work reduces gravity from a force to a suggestion.

Benicio Del Toro looks so bored that it's like watching a zombie play a werewolf. But the rest of the film is well cast. Anthony Hopkins has some evocative lines: “The past is a wilderness of horrors” and, waving a candle before his face “You see that I am quite dead.” And just as Larry Miller or Christopher McDonald have 1950's faces, Hugo Weaving looks as if he's just stepped out of a hansom cab from the 19th century.

THE WOLFMAN feels like a belated sibling to the early-90's remakes of DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN. Unfortunately, it also reflects the decline in quality of the original Universal Horror Pictures of the 1930's. And yet, as I left the cinema, I found myself planning a sequel in my head. I wanted to see Hugo Weaving search the charred remains of Talbot House for clues, then use his new-found lupine powers to pick up the scent of Jack the Ripper again in London. I want to see a man who walks as a beast track down a beast who walks as a man. A film that, however inadvertently, triggers stories in one's head like that can't be all bad.

Review published on the 21 February 2010 01:15