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It’s hard for any hor­ror fan who is up to date on genre-scene gos­sip to watch the new remake of The Wolfman with­out think­ing of its trou­bled pro­duc­tion his­tory.  Its back­story is as tragic as its title hero: a last minute switch of direc­tors, after-the-fact rewrites, five weeks of reshoots and eleventh-hour wran­gling over the musi­cal score are among the many trou­bles this film suf­fered en route to the big screen.

That’s a lot of bag­gage for a film to carry before it’s seen, espe­cially in a genre where the fans are nat­u­rally skep­ti­cal about big-studio prod­uct.  However, the biggest sur­prise is that The Wolfman is pretty watch­able.  It’s not the best exam­ple of the genre but it’s also far from the worst.  It also has a few key attrib­utes that genre fans are likely to find refreshing.

The plot­line fol­lows the basic arche­type of the orig­i­nal ver­sion, with a few notable revi­sions.  Lawrence Talbot (Benecio Del Toro) is an actor who returns to the old fam­ily home in England when his brother dies under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances.  His back­story, which includes a stint in a men­tal asy­lum, is revealed as he mixes uncom­fort­ably with his estranged father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), and inves­ti­gates his brother’s death with the help of the brother’s now-widowed fiancé, Gwen (Emily Blunt).

Things take a turn for the arche­typal when Lawrence is attacked by a fast-moving, man-sized beast one night.  He expe­ri­ences some beastly changes when the full moon arises, lead­ing to may­hem that attracts the atten­tion of Detective Abberline (Hugo Weaving).  Lawrence tries to elude him as he searches for the beast who attacked him, mov­ing towards a date with des­tiny that hinges upon a shock­ing revelation…

The end result is enter­tain­ing but falls short of clas­sic sta­tus for a few key rea­sons.  A key prob­lem lies in the script, which attempts to rein­ter­pret the wolf-man mythos in a way that feels sim­plis­tic.  Without get­ting too heav­ily into spoil­ers,  the “reimag­in­ing” part of the film involves a twist at the mid­point that pushes the story into a more psy­cho­log­i­cal, less myth­i­cal direc­tion.  This twist is accept­able to some but, for this viewer, said change bled a lot of the macabre magic out of the story.

The film’s impact is fur­ther hin­dered by some notice­able studio-level tin­ker­ing.  The edit­ing of the film focuses on nar­ra­tive drive, mean­ing some plot ele­ments and sub­tleties fall by the way­side.  The most notable loose end is the sub­plot involv­ing the gypsy for­tune teller.  It was a vital part of the orig­i­nal film.  Here, it feels grafted on and is pretty much aban­doned in the film’s sec­ond half.  The film’s finale also feels rather cobbled-together, includ­ing a set­piece that has “reshoot” writ­ten all over it.

Despite these com­plaints, a lot of The Wolfman works really well.  Despite the script’s prob­lems, it keeps the vin­tage set­ting for the story and eschews the temp­ta­tion for post­mod­ern humor in favor of a straight­for­ward, irony-free approach to the story.  This is a hor­ror movie made by adults for adults, with no pan­der­ing to the youth market.

The per­for­mances are also quite good.  There was grum­bling in press and fan cir­cles about Del Toro’s cast­ing but the script’s retool­ing of the char­ac­ter suits him well.   Anyone play­ing a cursed man-beast should have a feral, oth­er­worldly qual­ity and Del Toro has that in spades.  Hopkins does well, under­play­ing at first but open­ing the char­ac­ter up in inter­est­ing ways as the film pro­gresses, and Blunt makes a lovely and sym­pa­thetic roman­tic inter­est.  That said, Weaving is the big scene-stealer of the film, growl­ing his lines in an artic­u­late yet men­ac­ing way that makes any scene involv­ing him a sin­is­ter delight.

However, the best ele­ment of The Wolfman is Joe Johnston’s direc­tion.  He’s bet­ter known for fan­tasy fare but he shows a real flair the hor­ror genre here, ladling on a thick, gothic atmos­phere that eas­ily con­jures up mem­o­ries of Hammer Film’s bloody, lusty rein­ter­pre­ta­tions of Universal clas­sics.  He doesn’t shy away from the gore or shocks, a refresh­ing move in this PG-13 hor­ror era, and the hor­rific set­pieces crackle with a grisly energy that one usu­ally doesn’t get in big stu­dio fare.

If this direc­tion had been wed­ded to a better-realized script, the result could have been a clas­sic. Unfortunately, The Wolfman never quite ascends to that lofty pin­na­cle.  The end­lessly reshuf­fled sto­ry­line never con­nects at the vis­ceral, emo­tional level that unfor­get­table hor­ror film­mak­ing demands.  That said, view­ers who can man­age their expec­ta­tions will find that The Wolfman works as an exer­cise in style and atmos­phere.  Studio-style hor­ror hasn’t felt this lav­ish and intense in a while.