I had been persuaded into going to watch this by my arts tutor who was particularly looking forward to how the wolf man maybe depicted here in what is mainly a remake of the 1941 Lon Chaney film which I bet is fairly good. Not that todays short attention span youth want any of that classic gothic build up and tension. For them it is the CGI effects that count and in this film they are done pretty spectacularly well. I actually think a guy in a suit is a better wolf man and more credible than this monster that races along at super human speed so as to be almost too fast to be true. I can believe in the concept of a guy turning wolfish and believe that some of the male race may already be slight mixture of both vulpine and human. Jack Nicholson hinted at this in the truly bad Wolf from 1994.

But this is more trad gothic horror. The wolf for it is he, is a nobleman with a baleful look encamped in furs and breeches at the beginning. But Del Torres who critics are always saying is good is as wooden as a stake in this. He’s not aided much by love interest Emily Blunt who decides to stay in Talbot Manor for some inexplicable reason. Anthony Hopkins redeems his silly Van Helsing to play a far more disturbing father figure apt to offer pithy platitudes “You’ve done some very bad things Laurence” in an almost Lecter like way. There’s been an opportunity missed here explaining more of lycanthropy and superstition (they did show some Romanies earler), maybe the origin of the werewolf. There are some sick doctors here as we occasionally drift into the bizarre world of Victorian quack cures and treatments. This was interesting. The rest was very slow and lacking in dynamism and credibility. It was also extremely gratuitous and bloody.

The werewolf fight at the end was spectacular as the testosterone finally reached overflow. There were some great gothic scenes but the story lacked.

VERDICT 6½/10