Joe Johnston’s remake of The Wolfman opens with both an homage to and a departure from the original: Curt Siodmak’s poem, which begins “Even a man who’s pure of heart,” is read over the image of the full moon—an image absent from the original 1941 classic.
Johnston’s film plays less like a remake of George Waggner’s work and more like a reboot of the entire werewolf genre. Benicio Del Toro is an inspired choice to play the part of Lawrence Talbot, a renowned stage actor returning to his aristocratic English home after living in America long enough to develop a Yank accent.
His eccentric old man (Anthony Hopkins) reminds the audience that Lawrence has a history of mental illness. Are his delusional tendencies and ability to get lost in a character the real explanation of why he believes himself transformed into a beast? Well, no—unlike the original, there is no ambiguity as to whether the curse is entirely in our hero’s head (it isn’t). Psychology is included in the film only to mock its legitimacy, allowing for scenes of torture at the hands of short-sighted physicians.
Johnson ignores the underlying theme that made the original so terrifying for its time—the idea that a hero, like any of us, can have a beast within him—in favour of unrelenting shock and gore. So insistent are the stomach-lurching scares that the actors seem able to react only with a kind of intense brooding, with Hopkins being the occasional exception, often looking like he’s having a bit too much fun. Del Toro barely needs the wolf make-up given his lupine stare, but his transformation scenes are nonetheless pretty cool.
At times, though, the film is too explicit and exact in its details, showing the myth without the mystery. While the original took place in a vaguely fairy tale setting, this new version places our tale squarely in Victorian England, complete with Ripper investigator Abberline leading the charge against the wolf.
Shot in Devonshire County (home of the Hound of the Baskervilles), Johnston crams in classic imagery in an effort to appeal to genre fans. He tries to leave the pagan Gypsy mythology intact, allowing the exquisite Geraldine Chaplin to step into Maria Ouspenskaya’s jingling shoes. He does, however, omit the character of Bela (a wise choice, given that there is currently no Lugosi to fill the role).
The story is further complicated by alterations to the original’s father-son dynamic. Lawrence finds his ancestral home turned to ruin, seemingly cursed, and his father a shell of a man. The remake suggests that the sins of the father and son are one, and beastliness is the real family legacy. Or something like that.
I’m not really sure where Johnston is going with this idea, but the production of this film has had such a complicated history, changing hands so many times, that it’s ultimately developed a mish-mash of themes, motifs, and messages. By the end of the film, it seems that the creative minds behind the story finally settled on “the beast within us all” as the main idea—but only because Emily Blunt informs us, via voice-over, that men have souls and beasts do not, though sometimes you can’t tell which is which.
Thanks, Emily—I was still left wondering what this movie was about. In the end, inspired effects and cheap scares are no adequate replacement for Lon Chaney Jr.’s longing loneliness as a man who would be beast.
The Wolfman is now in theatres.
