Filmikaze!

By: Joe Johnston (director), Andrew Kevin Walker, David Self (screenplay), Curt Siodmak (1941 screenplay)

Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt

Upon his return to his ancestral homeland, an American man is bitten, and subsequently cursed by, a werewolf.

Squandered opportunity is perhaps the best phrase to describe the recent remake of Universal’s classic Wolfman. I hadn’t heard many good things about the film, but I still had the hope that it might surprise me and at least turn out a few characters worth giving a shit about. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t give its viewers much of anything to give a shit about whatsoever, turning out a bland and unimpressive rehashing that while isn’t bad enough to be shameful, certainly isn’t good enough to be called an homage.

The one truly strong point the film has going for it is the way it looks. Gloomy, Gothic and foreboding, you certainly can’t blame the set or costume designers for the film’s failure to inspire. The visual power stops with the eponymous Wolfman, however—Perhaps in some misguided desire to invoke the original series, the creature design is more reminiscent of Jo-Jo the Dogface Boy than anything genuinely scary, a fact that’s particularly disappointing when you’ve just sat through a discomfiting scene involving Benicio Del Toro’s bones crack-cracking their way into a more lupine shape.

Speaking of Del Toro, this is the most tepid I’ve ever seen him, although I’m not sure if the blame for that should rest more with direction or writing. Even Anthony Hopkins fails to be particularly menacing, playing what essentially amounts to a watered-down version of Hannibal Lecter. Emily Blunt does her best to soldier through, but still gets tripped up by the stacks of cliches being passed off as silver screen nostalgia.

The bottom line here is that with such a legacy, this movie should have been great. It absolutely was not. The film toes the line and feels so thoroughly phoned in that it’s a wonder it was made at all.