The Wolfman (2010) claws its way to a win

Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man (2025) was a misfire, a movie torn apart by its competing desires to be a hit-the-ground running creature feature and a thoughtful character study that deployed the werewolf and its metaphors to explore the consequences of bottling oneself up in the name of discipline or propriety. The result is a picture that drags even as it zips along too fast for its characters to catch up, and a monster whose rampage is less “intimate” than it is “underwhelming.” As I was putting my final thoughts on Wolf Man together, I found myself thinking back to an earlier attempt to revive one of Universal’s capital letters Big Deal monsters—2010’s The Wolfman, directed by Joe Johnston (stepping in at almost the last minute for Mark Romanek, just one of many bumps in a messy production) and starring Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving, and the immortal Anthony Hopkins.

The Wolfman failed at the box office and didn’t wow critics, but it did win makeup effects creator Rick Baker and supervisor Dave Elsey an Oscar. I saw it with a pal during its original theatrical run and had vaguely fond memories of it. So, with those memories wrapped around one hand and my frustration with Wolf Man wrapped around the other, I set out to revisit The Wolfman with the eyes of a working film critic and see how it played now compared to how it had played to a high school senior who was just starting to realize that movies were something he wanted to build his life with.

To put it briefly? The Wolfman is messy and a bit scattered, but more of it works than it doesn’t. Johnston and writers Andrew Kevin Walker, David Self, and Curt Siodmak interlink the human and the supernatural by tying lycanthropy to the doom of the supremely dysfunctional Talbot family. Hopkins’ Sir John Talbot would be a vile man and a poor parent even if he weren’t happily a werewolf—he’s a hard-hearted hunter who craves control over his family but doesn’t care enough to say so. It’s easier to distantly resent his son Lawrence (del Toro), who got free of his father’s thumb and travels the world playing Shakespeare’s great leads. It’s easier to hold his younger son Ben (Simon Merrells)’s fiancé, Gwen Conliffe (Blunt), in amiable contempt for daring to tempt him away from the rotting walls of Talbot Hall. It’s easier to let the wolf run. Harm and consequences be damned.

Hopkins is having a ball as Sir John, a man who revels in his wickedness not through maniacal cackling but through perpetual wry amusement at everything—be that Gwen turning down a rich meal in the depths of infecting Lawrence with lycanthropy and getting to wake him up in the aftermath of his first rampage. He’s wonderfully despicable, and The Wolfman builds his venality from sketchy-but-perhaps-reliable to confirmed bad to full-on horrific. He’s a marvelous villain, and Hopkins is the best part of the movie.

del Toro and Blunt aren’t sitting on their laurels either. del Toro’s Lawrence is a gentle, thoughtful man who is content with the life he’s built away from Talbot Hall’s miserable corridors despite grieving his brother’s death and the fact that they’ll never get a chance to repair their estrangement. His lycanthropy isn’t only a curse because it transforms him into a wild, dangerous animal, but because it makes him into the man Sir John wished he would have been. Blunt’s Gwen navigates her grief alongside her search for the truth of Ben’s death—and then, once that’s been put together, what she can do to help Lawrence with his curse. Where Sir John would gladly give everything to the monster, Gwen refuses to allow it to devour Lawrence. del Toro and Blunt build a sweet chemistry that turns on what might have been. Its climax, Lawrence admitting to Gwen that he’d give everything to have known her in another life, is downright swoon-worthy. It will not be this life—Gwen and Lawrence are still grieving for Ben. It cannot be this life—the wolf is riding Lawrence, and Sir John has to fall. But oh, the impossible possibility.

And oh, what wolves. Baker and Elsey’s wolfmen are an excellent modernization of Jack Pierce’s 1941 design. They emphasize physical power through burly physiques and an all-fours running style that sees them pull themselves into a leap. In action, they’re relentless. Against humans, they’re effectively invincible and messily maim anyone unfortunate enough to get caught or foolish enough to stick around. Against each other, they brawl, tearing fur from flesh and pummeling in the hope of getting a good angle. It’s gloppy, relentless, almost absurd at times. While The Wolfman’s wolf scenes aren’t particularly scary in practice, they’re a ton of fun, and the sheer over-the-top carnage gives the human side of the story a space to build terror in reaction to the aftermath of all the maiming.

The Wolfman is shaggy—it’s always good to see Hugo Weaving, but his inspector eats time that could go to Gwen or Lawrence. Lawrence’s imprisonment in a cruel asylum drags out unsettling images until they lose their power. But Hopkins’ villainy, del Toro and Blunt’s romance, and Baker and Elsey’s effects are a joy. If you’re craving werewolves and were let down by Wolf Man, as I was, The Wolfman offers top-grade lycanthropy, A-plus maulings, and a genuinely lovely almost romance to keep humanity in play.