Corbans review of The Wolfman

We haven’t heard from him in a while, but this morning I received a review of The Wolfman from Filmtwats regular, Corban. Enjoy!

An $85 million dollar remake of the 1941 classic horror The Wolf Man (yup that’s right, it’s the year 2010 and we’ve got no time for extra spaces). Helmed by Joe Johnston, renowned for such classics as Jurassic Park 3, The Rocketeer and Jumanji what could possibly go wrong?

Plot 

In the late 1880’s Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), an actor working in London, is lured back to his childhood home in the deep English countryside to help find his brother Ben, who has mysteriously vanished. No sooner than he has been welcomed home by his father Sir John (Anthony Hopkins) Ben is found dead, mauled by a large beast. Promising Gwen (Emily Blunt) that he will find her husbands killer he visits a gypsy camp where he encounters … a wolf man.

Impressions 

Shelly Johnson manages to capture the shires beautifully (probably succeeding in convincing more filmmakers to shoot in the English countryside than this year’s combined screen agency efforts) and between Johnston and his team of art directors the film’s canvas is visually rich. There’s not really a lot to get excited about from the cast, except about 55 minutes in there is a great little scene as Abberline (Hugo Weaving) enters the tavern and explains why he isn’t out looking for the monster. In regard to the positive stuff, that’s about it…

The verdict: pointless, but pretty (the mild version)

Unsurprising, un-original, film-school worthy gore. I found myself counting the number of people in the cinema that were sad enough to jump at any of the millisecond predictable ‘made-you-jump’ set pieces just to pass the time. I can only assume that Hopkins didn’t read the script before he got on set, despised his director and commuted from England back to America as the only connections he seemed capable of making robustly were tiredness and boredom. The original story was never great but I’ve no idea how Walker and Self could have been happy with this work because there just wasn’t enough going on (subplot anyone?), thanks for giving me hope though guys. As for the direction, if I described it as un-original that would be doing Johnston a favour, if by some bizarre coincidence you end up reading this review, please see Wikipedia for a definition of subtext.

1/5 – dross, dross, ooh….meh