A good werewolf film is a hard thing to come by these days. If you look at most of the popular canine creature features of the past 30 years, you will see that all of the good ones have taken a satirical approach to lycanthropy. It is just hard to take a wolfman seriously!  Take the creature in this film, for example. Other than a couple of scenes, we mostly see him in carnal flashes and, fitting to his character, in the dark.  The design is clearly a nod to Lon Chaney, so why does it remind us more of Teen Wolf?

As Rick Baker’s most recent werewolf design, he’s too much man and not enough wolf. As a monster, he’s too much wolf and not enough man. To clarify, when Lawrence Talbot transforms into the beast, we see a painful a process of bodily extensions morphing all throughout his body. So why is it that when this metamorphosis has ended, the result is appears to be a really hairy man with a puppy dog nose? Beyond the design is yet another double-edged sword. The lycanthrope in this film is portrayed simply as a monster and not as an allegory to man’s violent, animalistic nature. As a consequence, you can’t quite relate to the movie.

Imagine, if you will, a different Wolfman film. In this film, of course, there will be a better designed creature that is more than just an homage, and the producers aren’t afraid to let it linger on the screen. Every time you see the creature, you can catch a fleeting glimpse of a small morsel of humanity that is left in the creature. Imagine if all the scenes, characters,  and story surrounding the human counterpart weren’t streamlined simply as filler in between terror, but felt solely connected to the creature’s rage. That’s the Wolfman film that I want to see.

But that is not the film that came to be. Instead, we got a corny monster flick with too much style and a shallow attempt at substance. Take a look at the gore, for example. It makes very little sense. Blood is necessary for a werewolf film, but isn’t punching someone’s head off kind of pushing the logic barrier a bit? Then there are the scares! About every ten minutes or so (post-bite, of course), Talbot has sudden mental flashes of the creature which are intended to scare the audience, but they end up making us laugh instead.

The art direction, music, and acting, for what it’s worth, are all exceptional. Danny Elfman has turned in his most gratifying score in years. Benecio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins have been well-casted. If there is one man in the world you would suspect to turn into a wolf, it’s Del Toro! Emily Blunt does what she can with the material, but ultimately her character and the romance subplot she sparks are ultimately inconsequential.

The original Lon Chaney film is a classic, but if filmmakers are aspiring to make a film that will stand up against it, they are going to have to do more than simply make the 1941 film (or American Werewolf in London, for that matter) all over again. You’d figure that with today’s technology they could conjure up a werewolf that’s more terrifying than it is comical.

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