The Wolfman 2010

I don't always hate remakes but when I do, I tend to be vicious about it. I didn't want to hate the Wolfman remake and I kind of didn't. The remake was bad but so much more "meh" than that, I didn't end up feeling much of anything about it. 

Let me tell you what happened when I watched it. 
Wait. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's talk for a minute about the 90's remake of Dracula which is very stylized and has nothing to do with original story. What a beautiful movie with horrible, terrible, over-the-top acting. It's like everyone in the cast decided that they would embrace Expressionist film, add a pinch of Broadway, and then vocalize all their emotions. It's like a Spanish soap opera. 

The Wolfman is yet another example of a great cast not being able to save a terrible movie. Anything that stars Sir Anthony Hopkins is generally assumed to be awesome however, his looney performance in this movie is equal parts the exact same character he played in Dracula (Van Helsing) and Sam Kinison. He is so over-the top and so far from any character in the original Wolfman (which I adore) that I just couldn't take him, or the movie, seriously.

And what the hell was Benico del Toro doing in this movie? His patented brand of, "I barely speak English" cool that typically serves him well in every movie (Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas?!) just made him seem lost and out of place in this movie. Apparently "period pieces" are not a great match for him.

But wait.

Did I mention that Dracula is absolutely gorgeous to look at? It absolutely defined the esthetic of the horror genre of the time. You can thank Coppola for this lush vision and this genre benchmark.

I think there's some kind of synergy between the over-the-top acting and the film roots Dracula grew from. Because of that visual benchmark, I felt even more like Wolfman is lacking and ends up feeling flat; a complete disappointment because on the surface, it looks like it was heavily influenced by Dracula but, looking closer, it's just a shitty ripoff.

So we're left with crappy acting and merely tolerable visuals. 

The look and feel aren't the only places that The Wolfman falls down for me. It is essentially the same story as Jekyl and Hyde - our wrestling with the nature of man's duality. The message is that we are all good and evil. Society teaches us to control  and contain that "evil" but sometimes, it creeps out.

I love this exploration and it makes me want a werewolf movie where the "human form" increasingly becomes more prone to animal instinct and action (Wolf tackled that a bit but was WAY too cheesy. Ginger Snaps also sort of touched on this.) Wolfman wasn't well written enough to actually go out on this limb as far as I'd have hoped. 

And in the end...

Well, I honestly don't know - I fell asleep.

Watch the trailer here: