I remember seeing previews for The Wolfman earlier this year, then I heard it had a lot of gore. I was like sweet, a classic re-made with a modern, brutal, twist. Boy was I in for a bad movie surprise. Not even fan boy Benicio Del Toro's acting could save this.
The basic premise goes like this. It's late night, we open the movie with a man, Ben Talbot, in the woods, hollering for someone to come out for no apparent reason. When out of nowhere something slashes him in the abdomen and in the face, he's running away from the thing as the scene ends. Enter theater actor Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro) who is going home sweet home to investigate, per request of Ben's fiancee Gwen (Emily Blunt), Ben's disappearance. But when he get's home, he is informed by their father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) that his body has been found in a ditch, dead. And when Lawrence goes to view the body, it mangled and ripped to shreds. We cut to a gypsy camp where Lawrence is heading due to Ben being messenger to the town. The werewolf goes ape s*** on the village while Lawrence is there, killing a lot of people. Including a nice kill of a person by putting a claw up through his chin into his head. The presumed wolfman runs off into the woods and Lawrence chases the creature, but is bitten in the neck, as the rest of the gypsies chase it away. They care for his wounds and then help him get home to papa Talbot. After being questioned about the attack by Inspector Francis Aberline (Hugo Weaving), about the attack at the gypsy camp, and about a certain bottle of gypsy tears (No Borat get out of here!), and goes to a nearby lake to meet Gwen. They get all lovey-dovey with each other. But the local priests come in and try to take him, claiming the mark of the beast owns him. But good old papa Talbot comes in guns a blazing, and saves his son threatening trespassing charges. The next full moon, some of the villagers set a trap in hopes to catch the beast. Armed with silver bullets, crosses and other cliche werewolf killing items. The same night Lawrence sees his dad going into a crypt. Sir John locks himself inside his wife's tomb with Lawrence just outside the door. And low and behold he witnesses his son transform into Mr. Wolfman for the first time. Lawr-wolf then proceeds to howl for the first time and kill all those ever ready town folk who set the trap. This was about the point I turned it off, due to me being bored with the only good parts being the Wolfman killing scenes.
The bad far outweighs the good in this movie. First off, why change the story so much. I didn't even realize I was watching a remake throughout what I did. The only thing they kept were the names, and it's a shame that it's called a remake. The director is from Ft. Worth, Texas (Yeah!). Too bad after this bad flick I don't wanna see anything else new by him. Even though I will cause he's doing Captain America and Jurassic Park 4. Booger. The only thing I'm going to say about the bad script, is that it was a bad script And I don't know why anyone reading it, epically a hardcore Wolfman fan like Toro, would even wanna be apart of it. On that note his acting in the movie, felt inspired, part cause it looked like he truly wanted the bad script to be good and partly I'm guess for his love of the franchise. The rest of the acting was bad early 20th century (or late 19 century) dialogue and lives. Not to mention character development was too slow, and I didn't feel the want to know any of them. Finally we come to my favorite part of what I watched, the CGI and the kills. The transformation into the Wolfman was freaking great as bones crack out of place and were contorted, and human skin turned into wolf hide as a human became the werewolf. Not to mention some of kills weren't nice and clean. You saw blood, and you saw claws tear skin and flesh apart.
Rotten Tomatoes has this film at 32% fresh and Megacritic has it 43% good. I think it should be lower. I'm mean sure the CGI was good, but the acting was very bad, the story was untrue to the original and made it look bad. As if you could tell it had a model. The writing and directing were bad and didn't help this train wreck of a movie either. I don't recommend this movie at all. Even to hardcore classic-horror fans. In fact I think you'd be mad at the fact this did wrong by the name if the original. Bad directing and a bad script, ultimately ruin what could've been a good horror remake with ok acting, an alright story, and great violence.
Rating for The Wolfman: 2/10 or 1/5 Stars
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