Wolfman, the (2010) - Going out with a whimper  
| I really really hate it when a good trailer leads to utter disappointment. Just watch the trailer for The Wolfman and tell me that it doesn't entice you. When was the last time we had a good werewolf movie? I would think you have to look all the way back to 2000's Ginger Snaps for even a decent one. My favorite werewolf movie is easily 1981's Howling. There have been many attempts to make a compelling werewolf film, but The Wolfman is just another sad, pathetic attempt.
I could attempt to explain a story, but there really is no resemblance of one. Theatre actor Lawrence Talbot's (Benico del Toro) brother goes missing so he returns home to help find him. In his attempts, he is attacked by a werewolf and thus begins the transformation. Was transpires is pure garbage. I personally hated the story. I would have done so many things different. For one, how about making it more modern. This isn't a lesson in film-making though so I will leave it at that.
Besides lacking in a story, the film suffers from a horrible script. It is so bad. That surprises me because the two writers, David Self and Andrew Kevin Walker, have written Road to Perdition and Se7en respectively. The dialog is laughable and delivered with no conviction. The actors are given very little to work with and there work suffers for it too. I found none of the performances to be good. The original 1941 movie is written so well and makes you think about science/faith with such lines like "Come on doctor. You're letting your science run away with your common sense." The idea of the "werewolfism" being in Talbots mind is much more present in the original and much more thought out. It spoke a lot about the time. None of that is present with the new one. It doesn't make you think at all. In fact, it was quite boring.
I hated the way the film was framed. I hated the way it looked. I hated a lot about it. Each scene was framed in such a small space that the "scares" become very predictable. The camera is purposefully close up so that you can't see around the actor so you don't know when someone (or something) will jump out. I hate that technique in horror films. Make it more suspenseful by showing a larger frame so that you think you see nothing, but you will still be surprised when it happens. It's simple way to create better suspense. The "scares" were so fake, and as you may know, I hate scares that rely on bursts of music. So therefore, The Wolfman is not a scary movie.
The film looked very cheap and fake. The cgi was crap, especially the "wolfman" himself. The transformation scenes were a joke and the scenes with the wolfman running were asinine. I hated the sets and the clouds passing by. There is a way to do it beautifully (see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) for a prime example), but with The Wolfman it looked horrible. The asylum scene was one of the worst displays of storytelling I've ever seen.
Last thing to complain about, I swear. The score. One of the problems with delaying the films release was with the score. Danny Elfman had originally done the score, but then they decided they didn't like it so they brought someone else in. Then, they stupidly went back to Danny Elfman and reworked his score a little and that is what we now have. It was suppose to be "gothic", but what we get is loud and intrusive noise. To give the movie more of a tone (which it was seriously lacking), the score should have been more subtle and quite with a haunting feel to it. I am very disappointed.
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