CINEMA: The Wolfman

If you like your werewolf tales full of high Victoria melodrama then The Wolfman certainly delivers all the separate ingredients.

An isolated, decaying country mansion surrounded by mysterious woods; gypsies and strange charms and curses; a beautiful damsel who must follow her heart; a black sheep son retuned to the fold of his family and all shot through a strange, stygian gloom that makes the interiors as well as the exteriors so dark as to be almost impenetrable.

However, the resulting product fails to mix these ingredients into anything resembling a success, mainly because the most important ingredient of all – a good story – is woefully absent.

The action centres around the aristocratic Talbot family and their family seat, a huge country mansion that has definitely seen better days. When his brother Ben is violently murdered, Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) returns from America to find his father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), living at the house with Ben’s grieving fiancee Gwen (Emily Blunt). Lawrence joins the search for his brother’s killer and soon becomes aware that the locals and even the police believe his death was at the hands (or should that be claws) of some horrible, inhuman monster.

When Lawrence is himself bitten by the beast a strange transformation starts to change him and he realises the truth behind his brother’s death and also the mysterious death of his mother, many years before, lies closer to home than he dares think about.

So, the wind moans, the mist rolls around the forest, the candles flicker and somewhere in the shadowy gloom you may be able to make out what on earth is happening which, quite frankly, isn’t very much. Although the story is initially intriguing it flags so badly after 20 minutes that by the time the first transformation scene happens (which is technically very accomplished) you almost cheer its arrival.

However, within five minutes you wonder what the fuss was about because the actual werewolves themselves resemble fat-faced Wookies and are about as frightening as a rampaging hamster (although there is enough blood, gore, brains and guts spattered around this movie to rival your average abbatoir). Then there’s the problem of Gwen’s love for Lawrence and how she can save him from himself, just one part of the story that doesn’t ring true. Nor too, does Sir John’s insistence that Lawrence should let his inner beast run wild.

Which brings us to the final totally OTT battle of the wolf men, which is brilliantly staged but once again rather lost in all that gloom.

The Wolfman isn’t all bad but what is unforgivable about it is it just isn’t scary enough to frighten the bejesus out of you, making it a mere whispering whelp rather than a full-bodied howl at the moon.