Let’s face it: if you frequent a website called Famous Monsters of Filmland, you probably aren’t waiting to read a review before deciding whether or not to see Universal’s remake of their own classic The Wolfman. It’s more a question of when, not if, and even if the werewolf effects in this film amounted to a man in a hair suit wearing a plastic mask held in place by an elastic band, you’d probably be in line for the first possible showing, and I’d be standing just ahead of you. Still, maybe some of you are forced to deal with minor hassles like day jobs or school before you can make it to your local moviehouse, and I can think of no better way to kill time waiting for those obligations to pass than surfing famousmonsters.com, so let’s get on with it.
Universal has teased us with revivals of their monster line-up before now, with three Mummy films that bore very little resemblance to either the Boris Karloff-starring original from 1932 or the Kharis series from the ’40′s, and the promising-but-ultimately-embarrassing Van Helsing, which left many a Monster Kid feeling that the magic of the classic era would never be reclaimed. Word that the Lon Chaney Jr. vehicle from 1941 would be next on the remake slate was met with a mixture of cautious optimism, resignation, and outright derision. While I can’t report that The Wolfman is everything that we hoped, the good news is that it’s a far, far cry from what we feared.
Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), lead actor for a touring American Shakespearean theater company, has returned to his native England after spending almost his entire life in the United States, having been sent as a child to live with his aunt in the wake of a family tragedy. His duties on the London stage are interrupted by another messy family tragedy, the horrific murder of his brother Ben in the forest surrounding his father’s Blackmoor estate. For the first time in decades, Lawrence is reunited with his father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), who initially seems understandably unhinged by the death of his son — but as Lawrence eventually realizes, the elder Talbot’s issues are far more longstanding.
A clue among his brother’s possessions leads Lawrence to a nearby gypsy camp, but his investigation is thrown off course when the camp is attacked, and Lawrence grievously injured, presumably by the very assailant he’s been hunting. However, his condition buys him no sympathy from Scotland Yard Inspector Francis Abberline (Hugo Weaving), who notes that Lawrence’s recent arrival in England coincides with multiple murders in Blackmoor, and that certain details of his personal history make him the perfect suspect.
Even if you’re unfamiliar with the fate of Lawrence Talbot as first described 69 years ago, the title of this film should give you a pretty good clue as to the consequences of Lawrence’s mysterious injury. Suffice to say that his circumstances don’t improve. Much like the classic monster films of the ’30′s and ’40′s, the emphasis here is not so much on scares (though there are a few decent jump-in-your-seat moments) as it is upon the inescapably tragic fates of the principal characters. Director Joe Johnston (familiar to genre fans as the director of The Rocketeer and Jurassic Park III, more well known to mainstream audiences for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; before he began directing, he also served as a visual effects art director for a couple of minor films you older folks may remember, called Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back) clearly understands this aspect of the originals, and accordingly, keeps the Victorian-era proceedings shrouded in gloom and fog.
However, the care taken with the tone of the film does not always extend to the telling of the story. There’s a choppiness to the speed with which relationships between people evolve and with which certain facts are taken for granted, almost as if there’s an assumption on the filmmakers’ part that the audience is so familiar with the Wolfman legend that they’d rather not go overlong on details. This is more prevalent in the first third of the film than later, so it’s not a serious weakness. I just found myself wishing that the characters had a little more room to breathe.
The performances are generally strong, though it seemed to me that Del Toro suffers from the same affliction that Chaney Jr. did in the original, and that’s his American accent. Obviously it’s an unavoidable trait of the character, but when surrounded by so many elegant British voices (especially Hopkins and Weaving), the relative flatness of Del Toro’s inflections lends to a certain overall flatness in his portrayal, and it left me wondering how the London audiences would have reacted to his Hamlet (though fortunately, this change in the character’s background spares us the cringe-inducing voyeurism of Chaney’s Larry!). Hopkins occasionally dines on the scenery, but is otherwise enjoyable as Sir John, while Weaving is completely reliable in a fictional role based on the very real Scotland Yard Inspector, Frederick Abberline, who investigated the Jack the Ripper murders several years before the 1891 setting of this film. Emily Blunt, as Ben’s fiancée Gwen Conliffe, isn’t given much to do other than to express sympathy for practically everyone she interacts with, but she’s never less than believable; Art Malik is sadly wasted (and almost unrecognizable) as Sir John’s servant, Singh.
The production quality throughout is gorgeous, and clearly a labor of love and respect for everyone involved — but you absolutely cannot discuss this film without talking about the job done by legendary makeup artist Rick Baker. It may surprise anyone familiar with pre-release publicity to learn that the transformation scenes are not the show-stoppers that you might think. Don’t get me wrong; they’re brilliant, and I found it impossible to locate the seam between physical, mechanical effects and digital enhancement. But Johnston and his editors, perhaps aware that modern audiences are too quick to dismiss an effect as “just CGI,” don’t linger any longer than is necessary to get the point across, preferring to get us to the beast himself. The final result of the transformation, the Baker-designed face of the Wolfman, looks just as incredible in full action, up on the big screen, as it has in the stills and trailers you’ve seen up to this point. It’s no exaggeration to call it the most detailed, realistic-looking werewolf that’s ever been presented on film. I did feel that some of the Wolfman’s speed as he bounded across building rooftops was a little too enhanced — but on the other hand, there’s a bit (shown here on this very page if my WordPress skills don’t fail me) where he pulls up suddenly, perches on a gargoyle and howls at the full moon, that I could have watched for a full two hours. That’s the kind of thing you go to movies for.
All in all, quite a few beautiful moments in a not-flawless picture that represents a significant improvement in Universal’s approach to their monster legacy since the nearly-unwatchable Van Helsing. Let’s see where they go from here.
For tickets and showtimes in your area, check out Fandango’s page for The Wolfman.
Great review, Michael! As a die-hard fan of the Universal monsters, I found Johnston’s film incorporating every vital ingredient of a great, solidly retro creature feature. I had pretty low expectations after following the film’s troubled path to release and was so pleased to see such a well-put-together thriller. The production design is a real triumph, the screenplay and performances done in a classical style (without calling attention to themselves as affectations of any kind), and I actually feared Hopkins would go far more over the top than I felt he did. Instead, I thought his work to be supremely satisfying — funny, bizarre, creepy, everything the movie needed. And you’re right about Del Toro. A performance of simmering intensity that brought to my mind both Chaney and Oliver Reed. Elfman’s score I loved, too, and though it paid maybe a bit too much of an homage to the W. Kilar score for Coppola’s Dracula (as certainly it was meant to), it was richly atmospheric and effective.