After many years abroad, Laurence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), returns home after receiving a letter from his brother Ben fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt), informing him that his brother went missing. The day he arrives at Blackmoor Manor, his father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), lets him know that his younger brother dead body was found. Ben seemed to have been mangled by a powerful beast. Determined to uncover this mystery, he goes out at night to talk with the local gypsies. But the beast is near and he gets bitten…
Films of horror were always something that I enjoyed to watch, especially at night with all the lights off and preferably all by myself. It’s one of my biggest pleasures and once in a while I do a sort of a horror marathon after a long week of work. When I saw the first images of The Wolfman, I was ecstatic! Horror and paranormal, my favorite combination. So there I went to my local theater wishing for scary scenes and some good special effects.
My first impression after some minutes of watching The Wolfman was good. The Gothic settings are very well done and I could actually feel that gloomy and dark atmosphere that clung to the manor since the beginning. You could feel something was not right and this reminded me those black and white classic horror movies just like the original Wolfman. It was a good sign!
Half an hour later, I was wishing for my money back (the last time this happened to me was when I went to see Evita, I know bad choice!) The problem with the movie? Mostly the acting. I don’t know what happened but it was as if nobody in that movie actually cared about what they were doing. And the cast was one of the most interesting things in this production. When we have such incredibly gifted actors, who normally offer us some amazing performances, we expect the best. It seems I got it wrong.
Anthony Hopkins, an acting god, was actually a poor, malefic and quite predictable version of Sir John. Until now, I couldn’t get what he was trying to do… Then Benicio Del Toro also a tremendous actor, gave us a very inconstant performance. Since he was the main character of this movie, I’m not sure if I can forgive him for such disappointment. And I don’t think I’m going to spare much comments about Emily Blunt, who I simply adore, but who actually manage to make her character completely irrelevant. After all this debacle, we finally see some hope in Hugo Weaving as Francis Aberline, the Scotland Yard inspector, the only one who brought something interesting to this movie. The man is so charismatic they should have gave him the lead!
The special effects were good and, for once, the all man-werewolf transformation looked painful and real. In the other hand the action scenes between Hopkins and Del Toro looked a bit ridiculous with all that jumping up and down.
Finally, I have to tell those who were expecting, like me, some scary moments that not once this movie made me jump, not once I got the jibbies. If not for the blood and gore, they could have told the story of the lovely and peaceful Blackmoor wolfman and his beautiful lady Gwen.
In the end, it’s still good entertainment but far, very far from what I expected from a horror movie.
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Thanks for the review, I wasn’t sure about this one…now I think I’ll just pass on it.
BTW, just got Bright Star from my library…can’t wait to watch it! I think you guys gave it a thumbs up, no?
I did like it, Mollie! It’s very sad and sometimes slow but I always enjoy Jane Campion’s style. Hope you’ll like it as much as I did.:)
wow that’s one review I didn’t expect. I had high hopes for this movie. I thought it might be full of suspense. But I guess it’s just as well that I didn’t have time to go and see it…
I completely agree with your review – IMO the film was fun, in that it was terrible and therefore funny and fun to watch. The acting was atrocious, whether that was down to the direction or the screenplay or lack of commitment, I have no idea, but Hugo Weaving was the only one who was halfway decent.
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