This past week I’ve had the opportunity to watch the modern adaptation to the old film, ‘The Wolfman.’ I used to really enjoy a lot of the older classic horror films when I was younger, but I haven’t felt much of a drive to see some of the remakes and cameo movies. When I first saw the movie ‘Van Helsing’ in high school, I lost a lot of hope in terms of what the film industry is doing with these classic monsters. Mr. Hyde was portrayed as a giant brute in the introduction to the movie, and the way he was described in Stevenson’s novella was a lot younger than Dr. Jekyll. One of my favorite quotes was something along the lines of, “he was a deformed man without any identifiable abnormalities.” By making Edward Hyde into more of an ogre than anything, this Hollywood blockbuster lost a lot of intellectual weight. The way in which the werewolf was portrayed was just eh, and both Frankenstein and Dracula was a complete miss. The movie felt more like a film adaptation to Castlevania than anything.
Van Helsing and other modern remakes aside, I have to say that I seriously enjoyed this movie. The plot of the original ‘Wolfman’ has been changed. In fact, it seems to have more of a western Oedipal-complex feel to it, despite taking place in England. The actors portrayed the characters very well, and I really want to give a lot of credit to the screenplay. It was written by Andrew Walker, whom also produced the scripts for ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Seven’. I was really skeptical about this because the film adaptation for Sleepy Hollow completely lost every theme in which Irving set out to explore with that story.
I’m definitely not somebody who cares much for special effects (I despise 3D movies), and I found it to be fairly mild the way it was incorporated. I noticed that some of the wilderness animals were CGI, as well as some of the transformation scene, but in terms of the wolfman himself, it was kept very basic.
There were a few issues I had. For example, how the wolfman reacted when he was in the city, compared to when he was being chased by four people. I feel that the beast’s reactions were very plot-driven and didn’t feel as if it was developed enough to get a sense of him as a character. Though, I feel that the Talbot family makes up for this. I’m not going to say this movie is for everybody, but I personally enjoyed this. It received an average of 3-4 stars out of ten from most critics. However, it was also critics who said Finnegan’s Wake was total crap.
Stage Fright 