City College News

Joe Johnston's new film, The Wolfman, is an interesting thing to come out of the horror genre in a while, what with horror movies basically being gruesome bloodbaths like the "Saw" series, or teenage slasher flicks like, "The Stepfather."

The Wolfman is a remake of a 1940s film about a man who returns home to address the disappearance of his brother, and through doing this bad things start happening to him.

The film features Benicio Del Tor, as Lawrence, the prime candidate for cannibalism and brother returning home. Anthony Hopkins plays the father and a rather dark and shadowy character with an obviously clouded past.

The entire thing unfolds rather scatterbrained, the directing of this film was obviously intentionally trying to pay homage to the original film, however there does seem to be the assumption that anyone seeing it has in fact seen the original.

It is certainly bloody, and is rated R with little question as to why. Reviews of this film have stated that it was unnecessarily bloody, that the film would have been easier to read without all the excess gore.

This is debatable. I found when watching it that the gore and the blood, however graphic, were the saving grace to the entire thing. As a film in and of itself it was a rather boring piece scattered with moments of shock and jumpy scenes of gore and dismemberment.

There is also the consideration that this film is a remake, and is in effect a tool as much as a movie, to inform people of the prior film and perhaps open up a dialogue between the two. This will obviously not be the case for everyone, but it seems worth noting before absolutely shunning this film as a scatterbrained pile of blood and bones that features several brilliant actors, giving less than their most brilliant efforts in a poorly directed movie.

It is certainly mindful of its predecessor, the stylizing of the entire film certainly seems to constantly keep the original in mind, but if you are setting out to see a brilliant piece of history and fantastical storytelling, perhaps you should see something else.

However if your intention is to spend a few hours in old time London, with decent-enough accents and lots of blood-really, this film is gory, it is not for the weak of heart and it isn't exactly appropriate for date night-as well as a bit of a love story, then you could certainly do much worse than seeing this film.

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