The Wolfman

One of the oldest tales of horror comes to life on the big screen again. While the newest attempt with at the Wolfman doesn't really do anything new with the tale, the film is helped along with great visual effects, a solid act 2, a pretty good performance from Benicio Del Toro and all the blood, guts and gore one could ask for, The Wolfman turns out being not half bad.

The plot of this film has to be one that most people that haven't being living in a cave their whole lives have heard. Beast is terrorizing town. Man comes to find beast. Beast bites/scratches man. Man turns into beast. For the sake of still giving a plot outline, Benicio Del Toro stars as Lawrence Talbot a stage actor whose brother goes missing. Lawrence shows up to the town to find that his brother's body has been recovered and he plans to stay to try to figure out who, or what, killed his brother. Anthony Hopkins also stars as John Talbot, Lawrence's father. Everyone decides to set up a huge camp in the middle of the forest (for whatever reason...sheer stupidity maybe) and when they do, the beast comes for as much blood as he can. He gets a lot, and even gets some from Lawrence when he comps into his shoulder. Over time, the wound heals up perfectly and, no spoilers here, Lawrence turns into the wolfman. The film is just his adventure being this beast, with Emily Blunt co-starring as Gwen Conliffe his love interest, formally his now dead brother's fiancee. Del Toro doesn't give a solid performance, but it is pretty good. He isn't one of those actors that I would peg as being able to play the main character in a film, but he proved me wrong here. The film did suffer though. I'm going to chop this movie into thirds and discuss each one differently. The first act is horrible. The film started off much slower than I imagined it would. Understandably, there were things had that the film had to set up. However, they could have gone about it much faster. The second is where the film shines. I was entertained and enthralled with the film. This act starts as soon as Del Toro turns into the beast for the first time. It's exciting and felt that that old Hollywood horror. It had the sense of being filmed as an old '30s movie, only it looked visually stunning. Lastly, the third act of the film doesn't do anything for the film and it climaxes and ends pretty weakly. It felt cheesy and overdone. I don't know if the "twist" revealed halfway through the film was intended to be a "twist" or not. If it was, that's horrible because I saw it coming from practically the title cards. If it wasn't, they made it feel like it was and they shouldn't have. Fortunately, the slow first act and cheesy third act are both saved by the amazing second half. The middle is the only time that the film captured what I hope it was intending to - that old Hollywood horror. The horror genre is such an out dating genre. No film has deserved the real title of horror in a long time. I would say that this film finally breaks that streak. Once it manages to be entertaining, it stays that way. To all of the parents whose 11 year olds want to see this film because the wolfman is cool to them, don't let them go because this film is R rated for a reason. It is extremely graphic in some scenes.

The Wolfman brings amazing visual effects, good acting and excellent music done by Danny Elfman together to create a good horror film. Some parts could be called cheesy or slow, and some of those claims are fair, but when the film shines, it really shines. The film overcomes those weaknesses to create an enjoyable monster movie. The scenes that created the "old movie" feel are great. The Wolfman is thrilling, scary and will make you jump out of your seat.

Final Verdict: B-