REVIEW: Critic moons 'The Wolfman'

GRADE: C

THE WOLFMAN

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving

Director: Joe Johnston

Theaters: Carmike, Chapel Hills, Cinemark, Hollywood, Tinseltown)

Rated: R (for bloody horror violence and gore)

Running Time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

Despite months of real-life, on-set horror stories and presumptive bad press, I went into “The Wolfman” with the excitement that comes with seeing a good monster movie, especially one that follows in a long tradition of genre classics from a studio that made its name spinning horrific yarns in Hollywood’s golden age.

Much to my disappointment, however, the only thing scary about “The Wolfman” is its potential to bring down great careers.

Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, a famous Shakespearian stage actor who, in 1891, returns to his family estate and his estranged father (Anthony Hopkins) in England after his only brother is savagely murdered. As a child, the prodigal Lawrence left the dreary Victorian town of Blackmoor for America following the death of his beloved mother, an incident that took him years to surmount. He sees more than a little of her in his brother’s beautiful, grieving fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt).

Despite his father’s protestations, Lawrence makes it his life’s mission to track down whoever … whatever killed his brother. But when the villagers of Blackmoor are viciously attacked by a beast of astonishing brute strength and insatiable bloodlust, an attack Lawrence barely survives, everyone, including a skeptical Scotland Yard inspector named Aberline (Hugo Weaving), realizes they are up against something demonic … something now living within Lawrence ... something that will feast again when the moon is full.

“The Wolfman” is the sort of gloomy film in which everyone broods, casting suspicious glances while passing each other in long, decrepit passageways. The film, chock-full of dilapidated abbeys and stately mansions overrun by time and nature, is dripping with Gothic overtones. It’s “Wuthering Heights” with nasty claws and big, sharp, pointy teeth.

There is no such thing as a sunny day here, and the moon, full or not, is a beacon as bright as a lighthouse, casting lots of dark shadows for all sorts of unsavory things to hide in. The film sets a very definite mood, to be sure, but after a while all those dark nights and dark people just get, well, tiresome.

“The Wolfman” isn’t frightening, per se. It derives all its scares from sudden sounds and startling movements. Furry, fanged fiends leap at the camera from just offscreen so many times that it becomes positively monotonous. While there’s plenty of gore and dismemberment, it’s never gruesome enough to be particularly shocking nor indulgent enough to qualify as enjoyable schlock. This is a film with so few moments of levity and such a lack of compelling creativity that the result is a pervasively dull story.

Monster movies have been a staple of Universal Pictures’ vault for a century now, and “The Wolfman” intentionally draws on several of them, from the original 1941 version staring the great Lon Chaney Jr., to “King Kong,” with an untamed creature running amuck in civilization, to “Dracula”, with a romance doomed by the fact that one half of the relationship is a beautiful, saintly woman and the other is a blood-craving monster. Blunt (she’s the beautiful, saintly one) is a terrific actress, but is woefully wasted here. She is touted as something of a savior for Lawrence. She delves into books on the occult and historical texts on lycanthropy, and consults with an old gypsy woman (played by Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie’s daughter) for clues to Lawrence’s condition. We are led to believe that only Gwen possesses the key to end the beast’s suffering and save Lawrence. In the end, however, her resolution is exactly the same as the pitchfork-carrying mobs’.

The upshot is that all the gothic machinery and fun special effects are not enough to overcome what is a fundamentally dreary film, which, if it doesn’t quite live up to the bad press surrounding its multiple directors, fired and rehired crew, and thrice-shifted release date, is, at the very least, certainly nothing to howl about.