Much like the Wolfman himself, Joe Johnston's The Wolfman is a conflicted film that doesn't know what to be. On the one hand, it tries to be a moody period piece in which atmosphere is key. On the other hand, it wants to be a loud and visceral horror film filled with gore. By trying to have it both ways, it achieves neither. It's a shame, too, because the film shows glimmers of promise in both aspects, making its failure all the more frustrating.Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, a man who has returned home to England in order to investigate the murder of his brother. Shortly thereafter, he is attacked by a werewolf, turning him into the very creature that killed his brother. From a story perspective, The Wolfman does not try to add anything new to the genre. It hits all the notes one would expect from a werewolf picture. What bolsters that, though, are the visual details. The low hanging fog, the unusual sets, and the costumes all evoke a Victorian feel that seems right at home with this kind of Gothic horror. Though, strangely enough, the cinematography is terrible. At times everything is so horribly lit, you aren't sure what to look at. Early on, for example, two characters in the foreground are talking about someone in the background. The person farther away is - naturally - out of focus. Yet the closer two having the conversation are back lit and thus also inscrutable. It's just one example of what was often unforgivably bad cinematography.
But most of you don't go to a horror film for the cinematography: you go for the thrills. Which The Wolfman has... occasionally. When the blood starts to flow, it gets pretty gruesome. Limbs fly left and right, viscera litters the floor. But those moments come few and far between. Instead, we get long character beats that go nowhere, failing to either flesh out the characters beyond stock types, nor adding any connection to these people that will have to make hard decisions later in the film. When the violence does happen, it is all the more rewarding because we've sat through so much nonsense.
What also disappoints are the ways the film tries to scare the audience. Often director Joe Johnston resorts to the cheapest possible tactics to make his audience jump. Overly loud noises and things popping into frame are this film's bread and butter. At one point, a character wakes up and sees some sort of Gollum-like creature at the foot of his bed for no reason, only to really wake up. This is bad on two levels: resorting to dream sequences to create fake dramatic tension never work, and by having a creature never seen anywhere else in the film suddenly show up simply because it is creepy looking is ridiculous. And this happens a couple times throughout the film. Maybe I just don't know enough about werewolves, but are they known for having bad dreams about Tolkien characters?
The acting is very hit or miss, but I don't think that is entirely the fault of the actors. Benicio Del Toro seems like a great choice to play a tormented werewolf, but the script and the director let him down. He has nothing to work with, and as a result he becomes an afterthought in his own movie. Anthony Hopkins needs someone who can guide and restrain him in films like this, and Johnston is not up to that task. Hopkins sleepwalks through the film without giving any choices he makes as an actor a second thought. But then, about a third of the way into the film, Hugo Weaving shows up and decides to steal the movie from everyone else. As a Scotland Yard investigator he is funny, commanding, and strange - the exact kind of thing you would expect from a Wolfman movie! While he also has little to work with, he tries his hardest to make it all enjoyable, and comes closest to pulling it off.
Considering the werewolf genre has been so under utilized of recent years, its shocking just how tired The Wolfman feels. Had it gone for straight gore thrills, or for pure atmosphere, it might have worked. Instead, we get a hodgepodge of cheap shocks, dull speeches, and under developed characters. A film that pulls off this kind of horror so much better is Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. If you go in to The Wolfman expecting a good horror film, you will be very disappointed - and kind of bored.
