Wolfman, The

The old horror movie monsters are great. Not just because they are now iconic characters, but also the films themselves are great. They featured great talents like Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff. They were full of atmosphere and mystery. It's time to cash in again on all of those great movies again by making remakes! Oh boy! Because as we all know nothing could possibly be good unless it's new and people will spend money on anything. They did Dracula and Frankenstein in the nineties, and the Mummy and King Kong in the oughties, so let's kick off the teens with “The Wolfman.”

”The Wolfman” is about a man sometime in the 1800’s, it seems… let's say post industrial revolution, I'm too lazy to actually look it up. He returns home to a small village on the moors, (and there is nothing spookier than the moors, I tell you!) because his brother has been mysteriously murdered by a strange beast. If the title isn't a dead give away to you, it's some kind of half-man half-wolf creature that arrives at every full moon, a Man-wolf if you will. So is it any good? Actually, despite what I read to the contrary, it is not bad at all. It's a very simple and maybe predictable movie, but well executed and enjoyable. Benicio del Toro is pretty bad, which hurts me to say (not literally) because he's generally a great actor. The best thing in the whole film is the setting. The art department deserves some awards because all the woods and the village and everything else look so good. People I know hated the way the wolf man looked, hoping he would look more wolf-like and less Chewbacca like, but I disagree. I think it looked fine and struck a balance between man-face and wolf-face. The directing was fine, probably the worst things were the pacing and the dialogue, and some parts that didn't make sense but were ultimately negligible so it doesn't matter.

This movie was directed by the guy who did “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” for my money a movie with the best sets and effects ever made. It reminds me so much of the last “King Kong” in that a new film was made that tried to stay true to the original, and to the period, however the filmmakers enthusiasm may have gotten away from them as there are many long boring scenes. I did appreciate all the blood and guts, it did make the few action sequences that much more interesting. So the verdict is that I liked this movie, I'm not quite sure why, but I did. Decide for yourselves.