What starts off as a beautifully mounted remake of the Universal monster classic quickly de-evolves into just another Hollywood horror movie, lack of actual scares included. There is a wild and crazy fun side to this movie and a serious, dull, lifeless side as well. The two halves duke it out for much of the too-long running time before the film limps to an uninspired conclusion. In fact, the whole problem with the film is that it doesn't know whether it wants to be old-fashioned or cutting edge. I'd have preferred old-fashioned. A Bad review from The Basement for me.
There are three types of horror films that are rather hard to do in movie form: Ghosts, Frankenstein's Monster, and Werewolves. This movie was an admirable attempt, but didn't quite reach its full potential.
ReplyDeleteI'm a fan of Del Toro, Hopkins, and Weaving, and was eager to see what they could do with this classic. Del Toro, was a great werewolf, but lacked something as Lawrence Talbot. Hopkins seemed to operate by remote through this film- though I'm sure that was to give a better sense of the character's slightly detached, demented personality. Weaving was effortlessly cool and collected as always.
Ultimately, however, these stars weren't able to lift this movie above a stilted and somewhat dull movie. Maybe if there was more of the werewolf killing than there was...
Because of the failed potential of this movie, I would have to give it a "Bad",