Sometimes a film can have a troubled production, and it’ll all turn out fine — “Titanic,” until recently the biggest grossing film of all time, was delayed, and rumored to be a disaster, while “Gone With The Wind” replaced its director three weeks into filming. “The Wolfman” replaced its director shortly before filming (Mark Romanek leaving over “creative differences,” replaced by “Jurassic Park III” helmer Joe Johnston) and was originally set for release in November 2008, before being delayed for over a year. However, “The Wolfman” unfortunately, is not one of those success-against-all-odds movies.
The story follows Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), a British-born, American-raised actor, in London performing Hamlet in the 1890s, who returns home to his estranged family on receiving news of his brother’s disappearance. When he arrives, he discovers he’s too late — his brother’s body has been discovered in a ditch, torn to shreds, leaving a grieving fiancee (Emily Blunt) and a slightly unhinged father (Anthony Hopkins)
It starts promisingly enough. A lone man is in some atmospheric woods, and is gorily torn apart by an unseen creature — at least laying any fears of a PG-13 movie to rest. Johnston’s film is hard R, and the gore is crowd-pleasing and inventive, so hardcore horror fans may (may) have a good time with it: god knows they’re willing to forgive some pretty terrible movies if enough guts are spilled. These first few brief scenes are followed by the title card, with a real old school horror, B-movie vibe, and you suddenly feel that maybe all the bad buzz was misplaced.
The trouble is, the film never commits to a tone. The grand guignol action sequences are initially very successful — there’s a strong wolf attack on a gypsy camp, which shows Johnston’s command of a set-piece. But unfortunately this comes undone in a big way later on (more on this later). Furthermore, the non-wolf scenes are made up of half-assed family drama, and a romance that never gets off the ground; Emily Blunt is far better than the material, but her and Del Toro only share a handful of scenes together, so you’re never able to invest in their relationship.
Much of the film feels rushed, in fact. Whether or not this is from the rumored post-production troubles and re-edits isn’t clear, but it rattles and clammers through the early part of the film at a brisk pace, not leaving you enough time to get to know any of the characters. Anthony Hopkins gets all the best lines, and tackles them with a relish we haven’t seen from the actor in some time, while Hugo Weaving gets one great moment in a pub, and brings his usual class to a severely underwritten role. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of star Benicio Del Toro, who we generally think is tops. Again, the problem is that there’s almost nothing on the page for Del Toro to play — Lawrence doesn’t appear to have a single character trait, beyond “he turns into a wolf,” and, while Del Toro does invest a certain measure of pathos, he struggles with some of the line readings, and never settles into the character. Maybe the creative tussles and the last-minute director change sapped Del Toro of his energy for the project, but it’s a rare subpar performance for the actor, and one that cripples the movie. Although, it is fun to watch his weight fluctuate between scenes like Matthew Perry, enabling you to play “guess the reshot scene.”
Even the once-promising horror side eventually falls — a promising set-up where Del Toro is wheeled into a packed teaching hospital on full moon night is squandered, and develops into a ludicrous CGI werewolf parkour scene, while the final set piece, (SPOILER) a battle between a pair of wolf-men (one apparently added in reshoots), is frankly, inept, eliciting laughter from our audience in London. This is, in part, because despite the presence of make-up legend Rick Baker, the practical effects are disappointing. Baker was behind the seminal work in John Landis’ “An American Werewolf in London,” and nothing here is a patch on the work in that masterpiece (the Piccadilly Circus scene is bizarrely homaged/ripped off). That film is nearly 30 years old, and done without the aid of computers, but somehow the effects work here is much less impressive; while the CG-aided transformations are well-done, they don’t have the emotional effect of the one in Landis’ film.
This last one sort of hits the nail on the head, in terms of the biggest problem with Johnston’s ‘Wolfman’ — in the 100 minute running time, the filmmakers are at no point able to come up with a convincing reason for the existence of the film. The story brings no surprises or twists to the table, really, leaving it looking like a more expensive version of every other werewolf movie ever. Del Toro was a great choice for the role, but doesn’t justify his casting, while the period setting is never really capitalized on. Just because you can create a CGI werewolf transformation, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. As the director said candidly to the L.A. Times with a shrug, he was brought onto the project because, “I could shoot the movie on budget in a certain number of days,” i.e., we’re not dealing with an auteur here.
Like we said, horror fans may be able to get on board, but even then, a handful of dream sequences desperately grab for creepy imagery mostly unconnected to the story, while Johnston packs the run time with cheap jump scares, the cinematic equivalent of feigning a punch at a friend — you may get a flinch, but neither of you will feel good about it after. Horror geek or not, however, anyone who cares about old fashioned things and basic fundamentals like story and character will be sorely disappointed. [D+]