Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving
Director: Joe Johnston
Rating: 2/5
The vampire may have dominated the box office in recent months but this week saw the return of the wolf to the big screen.
The movie is an twenty first century makeover for the 1941 classic of the same name and brought together a great cast of Oscar winners Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins as well as Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving.
Lawrence Talbot's childhood ended the night his mother died. After he left the sleepy Victorian hamlet of Blackmoor, he spent decades recovering and trying to forget.
But when his brother's fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Blunt), tracks him down to help find her missing love, Talbot returns home to join the search.
He learns that something with brute strength and insatiable bloodlust has been killing the villagers, and that a suspicious Scotland Yard inspector named Aberline (Weaving) has come to investigate.
As he pieces together the gory puzzle, he hears of an ancient curse that turns the afflicted into werewolves when the moon is full.
Now, if he has any chance at ending the slaughter and protecting the woman he has grown to love, Talbot must destroy the vicious creature in the woods surrounding Blackmoor.
But as he hunts for the nightmarish beast, a simple man with a tortured past will uncover a primal side to himself...one he never imagined existed.
First and foremost The Wolfman brings nothing new to this genre and for anyone who is a major fan of this genre, as well as the original film, this movie is sadly a disappointment.
Del Toro, Hopkins and Blunt do the best with what they have got as the script fails to develop the characters as they struggle to become more than one dimensional.
The film oozes that gothic atmosphere, it looks fabulous, but that is as far as it goes as the script struggles to convey any emotion.
There's no tension of suspense and even the relationship between Lawrence and Gwen seems so forced and fake.
Now I have always had a problem with the man to wolf transformation, I'm sorry all you horror fans but it just never looks real, but with the CGI that dominates movies today you would think that this process would be a tad more realistic.
And sadly that was not to be the case as the transformation was soooo dull and Del Toro just ended up running around looking like he had forgotten to shave.
Yes sadly this movie was disappointing on every level the script was flimsy and lacked any sort of tension and fear, where was all the horror! However I will say it was quite blood thirsty and violent.
The wolf action was few and far between, the fight at the end is truly awful, that by the time the credits have rolled you couldn't care less.
With a gripping script this could have been a great addition to Universal's horror history sadly is really is a bit of an embarrassment.
This is a film that has been pushed back and back in the schedule and it really isn't difficult to see why.
The Wolfman is out now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Benicio Del Toro The Wolfman