Short Take: It's main message is nothing new, but at least the plot varries from the original 1941 version.

Director: Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III)

Screenwriters: Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven, Sleepy Hollow) and David Self (The Haunting)

Cast: Benicio Del Toro (Che: Parts 1 and2), Anthony Hopkins (Beowulf), Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria), Hugo Weaving (V for Vendetta)

Length: 1h 42m

Synopsis: It is 1892. Lawrence (Del Toro), a well off American thespian, is beseeched to come home to Wales after his brother had been mauled by a mysterious creature. His brother’s fiancé, Gwen (Blunt), seems inconsolable, and his father (Hopkins) appears abnormally composed. Nearby gypsies are being blamed for the horrible incident, but soon everyone is forced to deal with the truth that no human of any level of insanity could do or be what they witness. They are cursed with an unnatural beast, with an insatiable thirst for blood.

Analysis: The story is based from the 1941 film The Wolf Man starring the great Lon Chaney Jr., however there are enough differences between the two to keep The Wolfman from being a point-by-point remake. I shant divulge every disparity here, but suffice it to say that the plot takes considerably different turns on the way to its climax. Those things being said, the emergence of remakes don’t typically come about arbitrarily. The Wolf Man was released during a time when gothic horror was still somewhat popular (even though Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff broke down that door a decade prior), and traditional, animalistic monsters were the staple of the American horror genre. In the 2000s, American horror has primarily been focused on domestic villains, serial killers, ghosts, and reintroducing human-like monsters (Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, and soon Freddy Krueger). The Twilight films may have started a re-emergence of gothic monsters – beginning, like before, with vampires – and The Wolfman could indicate the beginnings of a trend (Daybreakers is a debatable member of this trend, as it incorporates vampires but contains almost no other gothic stamps).

Director Joe Johnston pays a bit of homage to gothic horror and The Wolf Man by way of aesthetics, but doesn’t seem to favor the gothic look. As a whole, the film is fairly shadowy and has a depressed color scheme, however heavy, mysterious shadowing is very scarce. One assumes that he and cinematographer Shelly Johnson took advantage of the plot taking place almost entirely during full moons. The design of the werewolf is an almost even mix between human and wolf, keeping the proportions of the facial features more or less normal. The snout is not elongated and the eyes are not enlarged. Often, the werewolf chooses to run upright on two legs and resorts to running on all fours only occasionally (claws, fangs, and fur were grown during metamorphosis, but the shape and length of the limbs stayed very much the same). Lon Chaney Jr. also only ran on two legs as a werewolf (which is surely the basis of this character design), which contrasts greatly with the purely animalistic portrayals of such a creature in, say, An American Werewolf in London or Wolfen. Also in contrast to these two is the psychological metamorphosis of the werewolves. Instead of devolving into a barely conscious state the Wolfman appears at least halfway conscious, able to identify who he is and who he is attacking while also under the influence of an incredibly ferocious nature. This composition deals directly with one of the film’s main themes.

Said theme regards the nature of man, which is a precarious balance between the civilized and the bestial. The movie might claim that man pretends to be as civilized as his technology and philosophy but is nevertheless as barbaric and archaic as an animal. That this criticism compares man’s animalistic nature to that of the supposedly vicious wolf lends it open to a variety of negative readings. However, The Wolfman‘s rendition of this criticism goes no further than to simply claim that man has undeniable ties to the animal kingdom, and does not say whether said ties are altogether positive or negative. Certain characters in the film provide both sides of this argument, and the comparison to the wolf might seem to lead to an ultimately negative conclusion, but on the contrary the conclusion is rather positive. Without giving away details, the film’s main theme contrasts with its notion concerning man’s rapacious or “evil” side by offering another idea that suggests how man is in fact different from animals. This difference is summed up in one word – love. Because man is capable of love, he is not an actual animal. This notion arguably presupposes man’s connection to divinity, being the chosen species of God. So, mankind has both positive and negative natures, one tying it to animals and the other to God.

Rating: 6.0
For those interested, RottenTomatoes.com published an article that lists what they deem the Best and Worst Werewolf Transformations ever captured on film. Ranging from An American Werewolf in London to The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the list covers a wide span of werewolf flicks and covers the famous to the obscure, and everything in between. If you’re a fan of werewolves/lycanthropes, this list is worth a look.

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