MyRating: YYY1/2Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving
MPAA: Rated R for bloody horror violence and gore
US Gross: US$ 62.0 Million
Worldwide Gross: US$ 139.2 Million
I watched this movie with a very low expectation and an assumption in my head that it will be bad. I almost never read any reviews before I watch a movie, because I just don't like any (even small) spoilers to ruin my movie experience. And since I started to write reviews, I even try not to read any other reviews before I write my own, so that it will not affect my judgement when reviewing the movie. I am a horror fan and I usually don't easily like or dislike a horror movie, because I have my own (unwritten) criteria whether a certain horror movie is good or bad. But it still influenced me when I knew that many critics were disliking this movie, and it created a pre-judgement in my mind that this will be another boring and bad horror movie. However, when I finally watched it myself recently, I realized that my assumption was totally wrong. This movie was not bad at all, and it ain't boring. In fact, I have to say that it was a pretty good one.
The most popular and widely known earlier wolfman/werewolf movie was The Wolf Man in 1941, with Lon Chaney Jr. as the wolf man. Even though there were other werewolf movies made before that, but this one is considered as the most classic one. The other popular latest werewolf movies are An American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Howling (1981), which brought the werewolf fever in the 1980's, and Wolf (1994) with Jack Nicholson as the werewolf. Inspired by the classic The Wolf Man, Joe Johnston (also the director of Jurassic Park III) tried to bring back the legend of the werewolf (who seems to be less popular if compare with his colleagues, the vampires and the zombies).
Lawrence Talbot (Del Toro) returns to his hometown after his brother mysterious went missing. It has been years after he left his home in order to forget his mother's tragic death, but he has no choice than to join the search for his brother, after his brother's fiancee, Gwen Conliffe (Blunt) tracks him down and asks for his help. At home, he reunites with his father, Sir John Talbot (Hopkins), an estranged and eccentric father figure who keeps a lot of past secrets of his family. In his search, Lawrence learns that his hometown is terrorized by a vicious beast, which hunted and brutally killed his town people. And his search is turned into a horrifying one when he encounters with the beast, and being attacked and seriously bitten by it.
Survived from the death, Lawrence quickly heals and realizes that he is not the same as he used to be. So as his fate. As when the full moon comes, he turns into one of the beast himself. The situation becomes more complicated when a Scotland Yard inspector, Abberline (Weaving) comes to his town to investigate the case and puts a prime suspicion towards him. Now, not only Lawrence has to find the real beast who slaughtered the people and to clear his name from the police, but he also has to detain the beast within him and protect his brother's fiancee, the woman he has slowly grown to love.
This is a good werewolf movie. The story was interesting and the pace was well maintained, with quite a lot of actions. The setting and the cinematography were magnificent in bringing back the aura of the Victorian era. It's dark and gloomy, but it's beautiful and well suited for the movie. The transformation from a man to become a werewolf was also well made and shown in quite details.
I don't see any miscast for the actors in this movie. Benicio Del Toro was fine as the man who turns into the werewolf. I think he did his job good enough. Anthony Hopkins also played his part well (even though with his acting approach that we seems to see so many times). If you dislike his character, I believe that was part of his job to make you feel like that. Emily Blunt was gorgeous and fine in her role, and I like her. She is certainly one of the good young actress nowadays. And Hugo Weaving also added the value to the cast with his quite important role. I think the wonderful casts was somehow part of the power of this movie.
This movie gave enough haunts and howls as a werewolf movie, more than I expected. Yes, it has its flaws and not perfect, but in overall, it was an entertaining and enjoyable movie. (MJ)
