Hungry like the wolf (for a refund)
'The Wolfman' lacks solid plot, horror, action
Hudson Olander
Issue date: 3/18/10 Last update: 3/18/10 at 1:04 AM PST
Section: Movie Reviews
Joe Johnson, the director of the 2010 movie "The Wolfman" had a vision. His vision was to create a movie so appalling, so inexcusably bad that the prospect of actually becoming a werewolf is less scary than being forced to see the movie itself.
The movie opens with Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro) returning home for the first time in years to attend his brother's funeral. He is greeted by his father (Anthony Hopkins) whose hair looks like it was struck by a tornado. It seems his poor brother was torn apart by some ferocious animal, an animal that attacks with the cruelty and intelligence of a man.
If at this point you can't guess what creature is responsible for the murder, then perhaps this is the movie for you after all.
Talbot doesn't seem particularly torn by his brother's tragic fate until he meets his brothers grieving widow, played by an unceasingly morose Emily Blunt. She immediately proceeds to throw herself at him with all the subtlety of an intoxicated dump-truck driver. Rebound anyone?
Perhaps I'm just cynical, but if my brother were to die I feel like it might be bad form to try and pick up his widow at his funeral.
In a move fueled purely by testosterone and machismo, Talbot decides that although the villagers and the police couldn't catch this monster he's going to go ahead and catch it himself. Not surprisingly, he gets bitten almost immediately and becomes the very monster he was trying to destroy.
Horrendous plot aside, "The Wolfman" makes several ridiculous thematic decisions that I can't really blame it for because they've been done by every horror movie in the past twenty years.
First, because the writers weren't very clever, and the idea of a man-wolf is terribly overplayed, all of the so-called horror is derived from shocking moments. Scenes of blood and intestines thrown around a room look more like someone knocked over a deli counter than the actual site of a murder.
In addition, a monster jumping out from the shadows isn't ever scary. It may be startling, but the fear is cheap.
My final complaint about this exercise in boredom that Mr. Johnson calls a movie, is the fact that he didn't even attempt a true horror movie climax. Instead, we get a fight between two werewolves. There is nothing scary about two werewolves fighting. You don't need to be worried about monsters coming to get you if they're all busy wailing on each other.
Meanwhile, Hopkins occasionally gets this crazy look in his eye, like he could be capable of anything, like he's a desperate man. Unfortunately, he only seems capable of destroying his career and is only desperate for Universal Studios to inject more money into his bank account.
The movie opens with Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro) returning home for the first time in years to attend his brother's funeral. He is greeted by his father (Anthony Hopkins) whose hair looks like it was struck by a tornado. It seems his poor brother was torn apart by some ferocious animal, an animal that attacks with the cruelty and intelligence of a man.
If at this point you can't guess what creature is responsible for the murder, then perhaps this is the movie for you after all.
Talbot doesn't seem particularly torn by his brother's tragic fate until he meets his brothers grieving widow, played by an unceasingly morose Emily Blunt. She immediately proceeds to throw herself at him with all the subtlety of an intoxicated dump-truck driver. Rebound anyone?
Perhaps I'm just cynical, but if my brother were to die I feel like it might be bad form to try and pick up his widow at his funeral.
In a move fueled purely by testosterone and machismo, Talbot decides that although the villagers and the police couldn't catch this monster he's going to go ahead and catch it himself. Not surprisingly, he gets bitten almost immediately and becomes the very monster he was trying to destroy.
Horrendous plot aside, "The Wolfman" makes several ridiculous thematic decisions that I can't really blame it for because they've been done by every horror movie in the past twenty years.
First, because the writers weren't very clever, and the idea of a man-wolf is terribly overplayed, all of the so-called horror is derived from shocking moments. Scenes of blood and intestines thrown around a room look more like someone knocked over a deli counter than the actual site of a murder.
In addition, a monster jumping out from the shadows isn't ever scary. It may be startling, but the fear is cheap.
My final complaint about this exercise in boredom that Mr. Johnson calls a movie, is the fact that he didn't even attempt a true horror movie climax. Instead, we get a fight between two werewolves. There is nothing scary about two werewolves fighting. You don't need to be worried about monsters coming to get you if they're all busy wailing on each other.
Meanwhile, Hopkins occasionally gets this crazy look in his eye, like he could be capable of anything, like he's a desperate man. Unfortunately, he only seems capable of destroying his career and is only desperate for Universal Studios to inject more money into his bank account.
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