Under the drillmasterly direction of Joe Johnston, the remake emerges as your basic tale of Oedipal lycanthropy, an Oedipus simplex if you will (the ungovernable son, for good measure, has been playing Hamlet on the London stage), so basic that it takes place in the 19th Century, unearths an archetypal gypsy fortune teller (a gaunt and gaudy Geraldine Chaplin), and fashions its werewolf makeup in the classic style of Lon Chaney, Jr.’s. The human drama, however Freudian, proves to be refreshingly unpretentious and earnest, as well as stoutly acted by Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and Hugo Weaving, though it is never quite so dramatic as the Caspar David Friedrich smoky skies, a variegation of nacreous grays. The marauding wolfmen (plural, yes) on the other hand, completely modern in their dispensing of gore, are quick as Bugs Bunny, rapid as the Road Runner, fleet as Speedy Gonzales, which only makes sense when you stop to consider that they are after all primarily computer cartoons, and they seem not in the least to be subject to the erosions of age. One might ask, on that point, why the crisis, the curse, has only just come to a head, why the villagers have not until now had to reach for their rifles and pitchforks. The Oedipal pater over the course of his lifetime has seen many and many a full moon. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd
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