Movie Review: The Wolfman

The Wolfman, starring Benecio Del Toro, directed by Joe Johnston.

The Wolfman has a few good things going for it, but not enough to balance off the bad things, which include the acting, the directing and the writing.

Benecio Del Toro is not a handsome man. I haven't seen him in anything else*. Does he play leading men? He is also a Puerto Rican playing an Englishman who has been living in America since he was a child, but he sounds like a Puerto Rican who has been in America and maybe seen a few American TV shows. He has trouble with the accent.  Oddly enough, Emily Blount is English and plays an English woman, but still seemed to have trouble with the accent. Maybe she's been playing too many Americans.

Joe Johnston, the director, evidently believes (wrongly) that you can never have too much of a good thing. There are some nice atmospheric shots of the fog in the forest early on. There is also a very nice time-lapse shot of the moon. Then there a few more time-lapse shots of the moon. And some time-lapse shots of other stuff. You become a little bored of time-lapse shots. Johnston also uses that staple of the modern horror/thriller, the forced jump scene. That's when something or someone shows up or is revealed suddenly behind the character in a scene, at the same time as some boo-yah effect in the music soundtrack. Johnston uses this over and over again. I hate this method. Yes, it makes you jump. It's a natural reaction. But my next reaction is anger. This is a cheap shortcut in a fear movie. The director is unable to earn a real fear reaction, so he resorts to tricks that fake the real thing.


As far as the story goes, I hated the father character. Which is not to say that I hated the character itself, which would be a desirable reaction to the screenplay, but rather that I don't think the character worked in the movie and I would have preferred it's absence.There was no real mystery about the father being the other wolfman. There was a ton of animal imagery surrounding the father, in case we missed all of the other not so subtle clues to his secret identity. The father was purposely portrayed as a creep. He was too nasty, I thought. His character didn't work. How did his other son, who was killed in the beginning, not know that he was a wolfman, having lived with him all of his life? Why was he determined to become the wolf and kill when apparently wolfmen cannot remember anything they do when they are wolves? Why did his faithful manservant allow him to run free after keeping him safe for many years? Did he kill the man servant when he was a man or a wolf? These questions are not answered or explored in any way. I think they added him so they could have a big wolfman duke out to climax the film, but even that didn't really work for me.

I will say that the wolfman itself  looked great in close-up , howling and thrashing about, but looked awful when it was running, especially when running on all fours.

 I have one general problem with werewolf movies: there is no cure, there is always a tragic ending. This is actually discussed in the movie by Emily Blount's character, who states that if magic caused the condition, then surely magic can cure the condition. I agree with this, and wish it were pursued more fully. I find it unseemly that a good man can be cursed like in these movies, and doomed.

For a great werewolf movie, even though it too is a tragedy, I still recommend American Werewolf in London.

*Okay, I looked him up on IMDB, and I have seen him in The Usual Suspects and Sin City. I just find him unmemorable, I guess.