THE WOLF MAN verdict

By Matt Holmes / February 9, 2010

Tonight, I can jump in my car around 9pm-ish, drive 60 minutes to my nearest Cineworld cinema and see The Wolf Man, a Universal horror remake that I'm desperately hoping isn't the next Van Helsing. I just don't need it to suck, there's too much riding on this movie. I wanna see Universal bring back The Invisible Man etc. I actually own the below Wolf Man headknocker, and I must have seen the original Lon Chaney Jr. movie a dozen times. As I say, I just don't need it to suck, these characters mean too much to me. And quite honestly, if Universal have f**ked up what was a hell of an opportunity that was brought to them when a tremendous actor like Benicio Del Toro came to them wanting to play his favourite childhood character on screen, then man - what a cinematic travesty. The screening is at a 10.30pm, a late night public preview showing. The closer cinemas to me have declined the free public showings and are beginning their Wolf Man roll-outs around mid-day tomorrow, so I could easily see it with fresher, more awake eyes on Wednesday. That's how to do it right? Mark Clark was on the job last night at OWF's press screening invite, and he sent me this brief feedback...

Not a classic update of a classic but wasn't the total disappointment I was expecting. I was dreading it to some degree, with it's production history (i.e. the original director Romanek being replaced by the legendary journey man Joe Johnston, Rick Baker's dissatisfaction with CGI preponderance), but I was holding on to the hope that we would at least get gothic reverence and some actual fear, and not the unintended horror that was Coppola's Dracula or the nadir of Van Helsing. I'll let you know if we got what we deserved soon.