Movies
BD Review: Two Different Looks at ‘The Wolfman’, Write YOUR Review!
Well, it’s finally here, the long-delayed Universal Monsters redo, The Wolfman, which stars Benicio del toro as the iconic Wolf Man. Was it worth the wait? Both David Harley and myself were quite disappointed. “While The Wolfman has some really proud moments, ultimately it feels like a Franken-film. It’s fractured mostly at the core with horrid character development and illogical situations. In short, when the Wolf Man wasn’t ripping off people’s heads — it was unbearably boring.” Click the title for Mr. Disgusting’s full review or read below to see what David Harley had to say. Don’t forget to check back and write your own review to tell all of Bloody Disgusting what YOU thought of the film.
Note: Some Minor Spoilers Follow
The classic Universal monsters are as revered as they come, shaping the way horror would be watched and appreciated forever. Saying that most horror aficionados grew up watching them wouldn’t exactly be taking a stab in the dark, with many of us sharing the same memories of Karloff, Chaney, and Lugosi in their famous roles. The Aurora models, books, DVDs, revival screenings and every other possible advertising tool has kept the films fresh in our minds over the years, which brings us to possibly the worst film of all time, Van Helsing. Universal was planning, at the time, a revival of all the old monster flicks and after VH failed to deliver the monetary return and drum up the public interest they were hoping for, their Creature From The Black Lagoon remake all but disappeared from the release schedule and, to this day, still hasn’t come to fruition. It’s several years later and we’re given The Wolfman, complete with an all-star cast, a fan-favorite composer and a director with high (The Rocketeer) and low (Jurassic Park) points. Unfortunately, all of those combine to make one of the most lifeless, uninspired horror revivals in recent memory.
Benicio del Toro stars as Lawrence Talbot, a man with a haunted past, who returns to the sleepy village of Blackmoor after his brother is brutally killed. Taking up residence in his old estate with his father (Anthony Hopkins), he decides to stick around and investigate his brother’s death at the behest of his recently widowed fiancé, Gwen (Emily Blunt). One trip to a gypsy camp later and Talbot is bitten by a brutish creature, prompting Detective Abberline (Hugo Weaving) to show up and start poking his nose around.
Up until this point in the film, things are pretty standard, if not a tad drawn out. The script by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self sets up the story pretty efficiently, introduces some interesting characters that have potential and then takes all that goodwill and throws it out the window. Instead of developing Talbot’s internal struggle and what’s going on with the village’s inhabitants, Talbot is thrown into an asylum for a while, all for the purpose of revealing a twist that everyone already assumed during the first act. Sure, there’s a great action sequence or two thrown in there – some great American Werewolf in London nods too – but aside from some visuals, there’s really nothing attention-worthy in the entire film. And the climax? I’d compare it to The Incredible Hulk. “Silly” is the best way to describe it.
The atmosphere, which drove the old Universal horror films forward, is completely absent from Johnston’s effort. Hopkins’ scenery chewing and Weaving’s comedic moments (which are fantastic) feel out of place and the sympathy that del Toro and Blunt are suppose to elicit rates at a two out of ten on my give-a-shit-o-meter. There’s simply not enough time spent with these characters, delving into their psyche; just surface observations without much subtext. And while the film has its fair share of gory delights, most of the scenes feel neutered with cutaways galore. There’s also a glaring plot hole, wherein Talbot’s character supposedly blacks out when he transforms but during the third act, he clearly carries emotions and grudges over from one form to another.
The CGI is probably the biggest curiosity surrounding The Wolfman‘s troubled production history and, quite honestly, if it’s really the reason the film was delayed a year as previously reported, everyone watching should feel personally insulted. Remember when Indy IV was in production and Frank Marshall went on record saying that they’d only use CGI when absolutely necessary, and then we were treated to prairie dogs in the opening shot? There’s a scene in The Wolfman where there’s a CGI bear on a chain being led around like a bloodhound to track the creature. Take a minute and let that soak in. No, seriously, think about that. It’s unforgivably moronic. As far as the transformation scenes go, they are better than the trailer makes them appear to be but nowhere near as majestic as what Rick Baker probably could have – and has in the past – cooked up. The creature in full transformation, however, is quite a nice throwback to the original film and the choice to have him switch between running on two legs and all fours works seamlessly and makes for some great chase scenes.
At the end of the day, The Wolfman is as confused with what it is as Talbot should have been in the film. It plays as if it’s been through reshoots and constant reedits – and even though that’s true, it’s a shame that it actually shows it. But the main thing I have stress having seen it is this: don’t hold your breath for Creature From The Black Lagoon anytime soon.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Skulls
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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