No Wolfman is an Island

Do you hear that howling? That, my friends, is the sound of a Werewolf in London. That’s right, tonight is a full moon and through happy coincidence, or ill-fated happenstance, today’s review is on that howler of a monster movie, The Wolfman (2010). I say coincidence since originally I chose this film because another monster movie is due to be released on the 29^th, I, Frankenstein. With Aaron Eckhart portraying the Frankenstein Monster some 200 years after its creation I do not know whether to class this as an adaptation, a sequel or a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic horror novel. Perhaps on the 29^th we’ll find out but for now we have The Wolfman (2010) a remake of the original Universal Pictures monster movie, The Wolf Man (1941), to focus on.

The Wolfman (2010), much like the original, is about dealing with parents, resisting new urges and, of course, growing hair in strange new places... in a lot of ways it’s a lot like puberty. Unlike the typical teenager, however, the main problem that Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), aka The Wolfman, has to deal with is that of his own sanity. After all, becoming a Man-Wolf hybrid can put something of a toll on one’s personal image. On the one hand having someone you trust can really improve your day when you learn that you’ve contracted an ancient curse/disease but on the other hand the whole “I turn into a slobbering dog-man” has never been a great pick up line. So love can be a little tricky for a Wolfman.

In An American Werewolf in London David Kessler (David Naughton) had his Nurse, in Wolf Will Randall (Jack Nicholson) had his bosses daughter and in The Wolfman (2010) Talbot has his brothers grieving widow; it seems fair to say that Wolfmen have a habit of getting involved with women who they have no right to get involved with.

But how do you know the one you love will be safe? Just because you love her doesn’t mean the beast inside you feels the same way. So what do you do? Do you lock yourself up; send her away or... if all else fails... put a silver bullet in your brain. Talbot quickly decides to send the woman he loves away, back to London, but, as you might expect, good love is hard to be rid of.

The love that Talbot and his brother’s widow, Gwen (Emily Blunt), share is founded on the isolation they feel in his father’s home on the moors and grows through Talbot’s attempts to discover the secret behind his brother’s death. Through a shared feeling of not belonging and a little bit of the “woman tending to a wounded hero” scenario they grow close, without actually becoming intimate until Talbot escapes from Bedlam Mental Asylum. I imagine that “psychotherapy” like electro-treatment and being tied to a chair and plunged into an icy pool probably gave him that handy push he needed to make that relationship a little more physical.

So, let’s talk about insanity. As we all know the first sign of madness is hair on the back of the palms. The second sign is checking for hair on the back of your palms.

That’s a joke I heard in the playground when I was about 9. It was a long time ago but it stuck with me. Werewolf films are all about that “first sign of madness”. Whether it’s a werewolf trope or just sensible thinking the hairy hands are often the first thing the main character sees change in his transformation. Who wouldn’t think they’ve gone loopy when their hands are growing more hair than on a bearded woman’s face? In The Wolfman (2010) this madness is a huge problem for Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) and has been ever since his dad sent him to a mental asylum.

But the hairy hands are not the first sign of potential madness for Talbot. Far from it, Talbot has spent a lot of his childhood in Bedlam Mental Asylum because of that whole “mother’s suicide” issue. It’s his time in Bedlam Mental Asylum which makes Inspector Aberline (Hugo Weaving) begin a line of inquiry which ends with Talbot being sent back to Bedlam for some extreme “treatments”. This section of the film is where The Wolfman (2010) could have been really original.

If only the psychological trauma had been pushed as a theme this film might have been a pioneering film for Werewolf Cinema. A scene in which the main character is electrocuted, tortured and plunged into an icy pool all for his sanity's sake might have become the focal point for a whole new journey for the character. Had his reconditioning worked and the doctors removed his “delusions” of lycanthropy Talbot might have been forced to look at himself in a new way which would make this film as much about madness as about the Wolfman. But there is no deep thought past this scene. No questions of sanity. No werewolf delusions or moments of mental clarity. Instead what we are given is a werewolf wrestling match.

It’s like the writer stopped after writing the Asylum scene and said to himself, “Ooh, careful, you’re dangerously close to making this clever... let’s put some werewolf fighting in. That ought to fix it.”

In truth, whilst The Wolfman (2010) isn’t an awful film, it does seem to put more effort into creating an exciting gothic style rather than improving upon the substance that could have put it up there with An American Werewolf in London. 

That hairy man-wolf look wasn’t great either... a little too “Teen Wolf” for my taste.