Lawrence Talbot returns from America to his home town of Blackmoor, Scotland, in the wake of his brothers horrible death. He vows to find the man or beast who killed his brother, who seems to have been mauled to death by something both powerful and vicious much in the way that his mother had been when he was a child.
Soon he finds the creature, which he believes to be a werewolf, and is bitten in the encounter. As the death count mounts, locals start forming a posse to hunt and destroy the killer and Lawrence finds himself in the middle of a bizarre and life threatening dynamic which will reveal the truth about the deaths of his mother and brother.
This 2010 remake of the horror classic The Wolf Man follows largely the same plot as the original although the story line is fleshed out with additional twists and layers while still keeping most aspects of the original story.
It even moves forward without removing what theoretically would be its most controversial aspect (but doesn't seem to be); namely that of its depiction of the Roma, or gypsies. At the same time, this film seems to depict the racism towards the Roma people as a characteristic of the characters themselves given the time and place in which the film is set, whereas in the original it came off very much as the same racist stereotypes were being presented as simple fact to some extent.
The film was largely panned by critics despite its reasonable acting and effects as well as its excellent cast which includes Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, and Emily Blunt. Admittedly, I initially had difficulty with reconciling the fact that Del Toro is not Che Guevara and was going to turn into a wolf and eat people.
This new film steps up the violence in comparison to the 1941 original and, unsurprisingly, is much more graphic. But this is largely still an old style monster flick in new style trappings, not a gore fest or a total re-creation. The Wolfman is a reasonable remake of the iconic monster movie that largely popularized the werewolf in film.
3.5 silver bullets out of 5
Rated R for bloody horror violence and gore
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