The Wolfman

The Wolfman

By Jonathan Fisher, February 13th, 2010

In the opening scene of The Wolfman, a young man is killed brutally in the woods by a growling, clawing shadowy figure. A little later on in the movie, the obligatory local bar scene features members of the town speculating as to what happened to the lad. The obligatory toothless, haggard crone offers up the possibility of something ghastly, neither beast nor man. The rest of the bar dismisses the crone and decides it was just a raving lunatic. In a movie called The Wolfman, who do you believe?


The young man killed in the opening scene is the brother of Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), a thespian in 19th century London. After receiving a letter informing him of the death of his brother, he returns to his family manor to pay his respects with his estranged family, including Lord Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) and family friend Gwen (Emily Blunt). When he arrives at Talbot Manor, he hears rumours of Something Terrible lurking in the nearby woods. He goes to a local gypsy commune to uncover what really happened to his brother, and an all-too-creepy gypsy woman warns him cryptically of the creature that really killed his brother. Shortly after his visit, the gypsy village is attacked by a wolf man, even though no one seems willing to admit as much. Lawrence is attacked and bitten, and finds his senses become more acute and that his strength returning at a surprising pace.

Hugo Weaving plays Frank Abberline, an agent from Scotland Yard who comes to Talbot Manor to represent the authorities’ investigation into the bizarre death of Lawrence’s brother. Eventually Lawrence does morph into a wolf-man, and his secret gets out. He becomes an outlaw as the authorities attempt to apprehend him, and then a guinea pig as scientists attempt to cure him.

The Wolfman is a pretty unremarkable monster movie, albeit one with an impressive period evocation. Del Toro is very muted as Lawrence, in part because his character is almost a non-entity. Since the parable of The Wolfman is that everyone has a dark side lurking below their veneer of civility, the main character has to be as meek and innocuous as possible. Unfortunately, Lawrence is a bit of a bore, and it’s difficult to get really into the romance between him and Gwen which isn’t explored in any depth apart from a scene in which Lawrence teaches her how to skip stones on a lake.

Anthony Hopkins tries to sink his teeth into his role as the duplicitous Lord Talbot, but it feels like he’s coasting through the film just to get to his pay check. Weaving is, as always, riveting as Abberline, but his role is so small, the part so underdeveloped that when the movie hints that the sequel may be about his character, I didn’t much care.

The Wolfman builds to a predictable climax in which Lawrence must face his own dark side, fight his creator and eventually sacrifice himself at the expense of his love. I didn’t really get into The Wolfman as much as I wanted to. Its director is Joe Johnston, who brought us Jurassic Park III, which I think is a more enjoyable and less sullen creature feature. Despite a couple of neat action sequences, including one inside a mental asylum, The Wolfman is just a little too predictable, and its characters a little too bland, to warrant anything more than a passive, brain-switched-off look.