Film Review: The Wolfman (2010)
Universal's 2010 remake of The Wolf Man arrives weighted by the heavy mantle of its predecessor. The original 1941 film, directed by George Waggner and written by Curt Siodmak, did not merely tell a horror story—it codified the very concept of the werewolf for modern audiences. Siodmak invented the now-familiar tropes: the infectious bite, the silver vulnerability, the tragic duality of man and monster. Lon Chaney Jr.'s portrayal of Larry Talbot remains a benchmark of pathos, conveying the agony of an ordinary man transformed against his will into something vile. Against this legacy, Joe Johnston's remake was always going to face an uphill struggle. Regrettably, it proves to be a handsome but hollow exercise in Gothic pastiche—competent in craft yet bereft of the soul that animated the original.
Set in 1891, the film relocates the action to rural England (though one could be forgiven for mistaking it for a generic Hammer-esque backlot). Benicio del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, a celebrated Shakespearean actor returned from America to the ancestral estate of his eccentric father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), following the grisly murder of his brother. The mutilated corpse suggests something more sinister than mere beast or brigand, and Lawrence's investigations lead him to a gypsy encampment where he receives the fateful bite that damns him to lycanthropy.
Johnston's film is not without its virtues. The production design is genuinely impressive, conjuring a properly gloomy Victorian atmosphere of mist-shrouded moors and crumbling aristocratic grandeur. The special effects—particularly Rick Baker's Oscar-winning makeup work and the creature design—are technically accomplished, and the film makes unapologetic use of its R-rating to deliver scenes of visceral, bloody carnage. The cast, too, is impeccable on paper: del Toro brings his customary intensity, Hopkins chews scenery with aristocratic relish, Emily Blunt provides romantic interest as the bereaved fiancée Gwen, and Hugo Weaving appears as Scotland Yard inspector Aberline, a real-life figure shoehorned into the narrative as a would-be Van Helsing.
Yet these assets cannot compensate for fundamental deficiencies. The screenplay—credited to Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, though reportedly subjected to endless rewrites and editorial interference—plays the material with a deadly seriousness that borders on the suffocating. Where the 1941 original balanced its horror with a certain tragic poetry, Johnston's film treats every Gothic cliché with po-faced reverence, never daring to wink at the absurdity inherent in the material. The result is not homage but pastiche: a by-the-numbers exercise that ticks off genre boxes without ever discovering a pulse of its own.
The characters, for all the talent portraying them, remain frustratingly flat. Del Toro's Lawrence is a brooding cipher rather than a man we mourn; the transformation sequences, however technically proficient, lack the emotional weight Chaney brought to the role. Blunt is particularly ill-served, her Gwen remaining chastely "buttoned up to the neck" throughout—a telling example of Hollywood's peculiar morality where graphic disembowelment is permissible but sexuality is verboten. Even the Aberline subplot, which might have provided narrative interest, is introduced only to be squandered.
The film's troubled production history—marked by director changes, reshoots, and last-minute editing—shows through in the final cut. Pacing is uneven, tension dissipates in scenes that should grip, and the climactic revelations land with a thud rather than a shock. What emerges is a "solid" genre product—watchable, professionally mounted, and ultimately forgettable.
Where Siodmak's original suggested the duality within all men, the struggle between civilized restraint and animalistic impulse, this remake offers only spectacle without subtext. It is a film that knows the shape of Gothic horror without understanding its shadow—a handsomely mounted museum piece rather than a living, breathing nightmare. For less demanding devotees of creature features, it passes the time adequately. For those seeking the tragic resonance that made the 1941 film endure, it offers only a pale imitation.
Rating: 5/10
RATING: 5/10
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