The Wolfman

Wow, an old school horror. Serious Hammer and Lon Chaney vibes all round. They made a werewolf film that didn't try to do anything original, but tried to do it well, and for my money, largely pulled it off. An unfortunate result was that it was far too relaxed for what should be a horror, there are zero surprises throughout. With the possible exception of Hugo Weavings rather fine mutton chops. It also suffers quite a bit from its heritage, despite their cult standing and powerful influence, Hammer films (by and large) were not actually very good, they were very badly paced affairs, and the first half of The Wolfman could act as a powerful sedative to your modern attention deficit audience. It's a good long time into the movie before we see our first wolf, but once they're up and about the pace picks up like no one's business. Limbs literally start to fly. The shift from creaky costume drama to comic book mayhem is really rather jarring.

Despite all this I found myself liking it, but mainly because it was such a homage. I'm not sure it would stand up on it's own, it's odd and disjointed and really blindingly obvious, but it had a genuine reverence for the mythology and history of it's genre, which is such a rarity in these things.