Early next year, Universal and Blumhouse will continue their reanimation of the Universal Monsters with the release of director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man. Whannell, who also directed Insidious 3 and Upgrade for Blumhouse, was the man responsible for bringing The Invisible Man back to life in 2020. He did so with a modern twist on […]
If you were excited about the actors, the trailer made sure to use some of the worst line delivery moments in the entire film from Hopkins and Del Toro. Pumped about seeing what an old-school horror movie looked like with a huge Universal budget? The computer-generated effects and cinematography felt to me as if they were cut scenes borrowed from an Xbox 360 game. Practical effects were the way to go here. Even when they were used, there was so much of the fake stuff going on that it was hard to differentiate.
So, after watching The Wolfman remake fourteen years later with my own eyes, I have to say I wasn’t completely wrong about my assumptions. While I highly doubt the new film will be very comparable or even tell the same story, there are some tales of woe here the new film can learn from.
2010’s The Wolf Man is not at all without its hints of potential greatness. Del Toro (a huge fan of the original and collector of Wolf Man memorabilia) is perfectly cast and has amazing chemistry with Emily Blunt in the film. Though, I don’t personally approve of their flirtatious devices. That’s your brother’s widow, man! You’ve known her for like five minutes and his body ain’t even cold! Stop making goo-goo eyes at her! Anthony Hopkins as an evil werewolf-dad who broods in a giant castle all day? He could do that with his eyes closed. Hell, I like to imagine him that way in general. Hugo Weaving is also perfectly cast as the self-righteous inspector who might seem like a dick but is completely right in this situation for demanding Lawrence Talbot Jr. be killed. I know he’s handsome and charming and all. He’s Benicio del Toro for crying out loud. But I mean, he has brutally murdered, I don’t know, thirty-seven innocent people?
No matter how good the casting is, you simply cannot place these actors in such a simulated atmosphere and have anything they perform feel realistic. While some of the landscapes are perfectly gothic and moody, most just feel fake and once again, video game-ish. Add to that the decision to use CGI for the cornerstone of any lycanthrope movie….the transformation….and all feels lost. When films like Fright Night and An American Werewolf In London did far more with far less of a budget at their fingertips, I don’t quite see the point in what we’re doing here. Money simply does not equal quality and in the case of a production filled with reshoots, overspending, and even a change of directors – originally Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) was scheduled to direct but left the project due to creative differences with Universal – this is painfully obvious in The Wolfman.
Then, there is the look of the titular character himself. At times, the look would work and overcome the nagging computer-generated aesthetic. But nine times out of ten I would have preferred something practical. What was the point of having Benicio del Toro play the character if we couldn’t even tell it was the same person? To quote Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, “Sam, you got me covered up in all this junk. How’s the audience going to know it’s me?” The film could never decide whether it was an actor’s film or a special FX spotlight and this choice made that decision for them. A mistake, because in this instance, the actors were far better.
Then there’s the climax of the film where father and son turn into werewolves and throw down in the living room. What should have been a cool moment felt more like you were playing Mortal Kombat with two werewolves in the living room of Castle Grayskull. Okay, that sounds fun. I’m going to ask my wife if we can do that for my fortieth birthday party. But this was supposed to be a serious moment with high stakes. Not Cheetos and button mashing. Again, that sounds awesome, but the quality of The Wolfman in no way represented the heights it was striving for.
The story of The Wolfman carries an equal share of the blame.
If you’re re-telling a tale as old as time that 99% of your audience already knows and 100% of your audience has seen the product of (the werewolf) in various other films and media, you have to do something original to keep their interest. Instead, The Wolfman feels as if it goes through long periods where it does nothing but wallow in its own self-importance. We all know Batman broods at the top of buildings. But we aren’t asked to hang out there with him for twenty minutes at a time. This script slow-motioned its way through a very simple story in painstaking detail rather than focusing on the depth of emotions our characters were going through.
One moment at the end of the film shows the missed potential of all this in a brutal way: As Gwen is pinned down by a fully transformed Talbot Jr. and pleading for her life, there is an extremely tense and eventually dark moment between the two of them where you realize that there is no hope and that he’s going to have to live with the consequences of what he’s done and is about to do. This is the one truly scary moment of the film, as the action slows to a halt and they stare at each other while we wait in anticipation of him possibly mauling her. It treats our characters like real people for a moment and allows us to sympathize with them. Very unlike the workmanlike nature of what came before.
The Wolfman wasn’t all for naught, however.
I’m super appreciative of the bevy of gore throughout for a film that otherwise felt so stuffy and studio oriented. There are a few cool moments of decapitations and dismemberments worthy of your attention; there’s a well-crafted jump scare of two and a gnarly werewolf massacre that is quite fun while it lasts. I’m hopeful Blumhouse and Universal will let the carnage run wild in their film as well and hopefully without the watered-down aesthetic choices made here. In the end, The Wolfman isn’t the worst lycanthrope flick you’ll see by any stretch of the imagination. But it damn sure could have been the best with only a few very important tweaks.
Here’s hoping that Leigh Whannell’s 2025 rendition can avoid some of the same pratfalls including the most important one of all: Don’t skimp on the werewolf transformation!
