The Wolfman

Are movie reviews all I'm good at? I don't know, but... The Wolfman, the movie for which I've been waiting a good four years, due to it's massive preproduction time and it's release date being moved up a grand total of three times, the intendedly epic remake of the 1941 Universal Pictures Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi CLASSIC Horror film- was lamesauce.

Why? The ones and twos of my more or less faithful reader(s) may demand in lamentful cries. I will tell you.

Despite the fact that the setting and costumes of the picture relfect the Victorian period, the aging griminess of the time, the clever implementation of a historically existent character, Detective Aberline of the infamous Jack the Ripper case, and the fleshing out of the originally smaller scale picture and characters of the 1941 classic, The Wolfman fails at one particulary important aspect of all memorable films- plot. Joe Johnson, director of the attrocity, seems to be more interested in getting an early nineteen hundreds quality to the film, never holding a scene for longer than a minute, causing a "Flicker Effect," that leaves the audience with a feeling of extreme disorientation as well as a severe headache.

Though the original characters of the film, the Talbot family and the female lead, Gwen Whelan, have been given deeper, admittedly interesting back stories, the film failed to fully delve into anyone or thing in perticular, transforming any potentially i then their prior nteresting character developments into aggresively pointless white noise. The film, which falls officially under the category of Horror, succeeds only at being horrible, the only thing frightening about it being Anthony Hopkins less-than-admirable performance as Sir John Talbot. Every twist and turn featured is spoiled by an extreme lack of suspense, so that the audience doesn't so much gasp at a surprise as nod to themselves with pursed lips, wishing the characters secrets hadn't been so painfully obvious.

The silver lining of this dark cloud? Benecio Del Toro's disgustingly spectacular transformations. Each full moon pays homage to previous beastly classics such as American Werewolf in London, limbs cracking , realization creeping across the wolfman's face so very slowly that the audience is forced to wince and look away. Unfortunately, these few scenes aren't enough to save The Wolfman from thrashing itself to tiny, bite-sized pieces.