Joe Johnston’s “The Wolfman”, a remake only a hair removed from the beloved 1941 Universal production "The Wolf Man", is not a movie that shies from its Freudian overtones.  They aren’t overtones at all, really, but the plot of the picture, front and center, a plot as loud as a barking dog.  A troubled man inherits a desire to kill his father and marry his mother.  His unleashed id assumes the form of a hairy monster with insatiable appetites.  On top of that, he’s been playing Hamlet in the West End.  Severe Oedipal complications would seem to be on the cards for poor Lawrence Talbot, el hombre lobo, an American werewolf in velvet.  The star, Benicio Del Toro, who is Puerto Rican by birth, looks nothing like his father, played by Anthony Hopkins, adding the further suggestion that the sins of Empire are returning to England.  Daddy dearest has the cash, the crib, and the girl.  He's the alpha dog, and he's going to fight like hell to keep what's his.

No such father-son anxieties for the rest of the movie.  Using the original screenplay as a foundation and the Universal brand as a pole star, Johnston’s update of “The Wolfman” exudes love and respect for the original.  It is both a remake for Zev Grossman’s film and an homage to classic Hollywood appropriations of Victorian supernatural tales.  Many times during “The Wolfman” one feels a fleeting tingle of communion with the collective pop unconscious.  Weird mists, haunted manses framed by skeletal tree limbs, velvety shadows, the clip-clop of horses’ hoofs on deserted cobblestone streets, blood moons over forlorn heaths, the sooty rooftops of charnel-house London: at times “The Wolfman” could be “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, “Dracula”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, or “The Murders In The Rue Morgue”.  As the recent "Sherlock Holmes" proved, Hollywood is now capable of rendering an ideal London equal to the exaggerations of a Dickens; London, only moreso.

But what it is, more than an homage to the past, is the story of a boy and his (inner) dog.  Visually, Del Toro was an excellent choice for the role.  Like Lon Chaney Jr., Del Toro is big and brooding, a handsome yet muttlike leading man.  Perfect for a man with a secret, Del Toro always seems to carry inside him the latent threat of violence.  Del Toro, in his breakout role, was at once the mildest and the most menacing of “The Usual Suspects”.  His verbal and physical clumsiness belied a calculating mind in full command of a ready, pantherlike physicality.  In other roles, like “The Way of The Gun” and “Che”, his characters also seemed to hold much in reserve, their inscrutable squinting eyes keeping close tabs on everyone else.  Trouble is, these are feline characteristics.  Bringing these traits to a role defined by the embarrassing overflow of wolfish desires results in a hero walking through the movie more baffled than troubled by his changing self.  Del Toro’s young heir seems drained of affect, as mirthless as Hamlet but with none of the prince’s metaphysical bent or gallows humor.  The part is rich in presence, poor in words.

Fortunately, words are Anthony Hopkins’ specialty.  Every proper ‘classic’ horror picture needs at least one irreproachable, legendary British thespian to provide the sheen of old world manners.  Though Sir John Talbot is not as cock-eyed as the garrulous crackpot Van Helsing in Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, in their feisty eccentricity each vouchsafes the supernatural lore of his respective movie.  Sir John’s the sort of geezer who apostrophizes beneath full moons, walks the deserted manor with a candle in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and always has the look of a man who’s been up all night reading Ovid and quaffing Amantillado.  Hopkins brings much-needed humor to the role; his eyes sparkle with a hint of merriment as he watches his son investigate the mysterious death of his brother, knowing full well that the road will lead him to where he least expects. It would be a disservice to call him a cliché; like so much else in the movie, he is an affectionately crafted simulacrum, the prize piece in Johnston’s living museum.

The werewolf is fearsome.  Quick and nasty, the sequences are lightning-strikes of fangs and claws.  Some growling, some roaring; some splats, some screams; the a slow survey of the carnage, the camera lingering over scarlet splashes and sausagey coils of spilled guts.  None of it is heavy with digital effects. Indeed, the best tribute “The Wolfman” pays to the horror films of yore is the way most of its thrills come courtesy of traditional effects.  The beast is pure pixels, but its swiftness and lethal efficiency are mostly established by editing.  The transformation from man to lycan isn’t substantially different than the celebrated bit in “An American Werewolf in London”, though a tad more believable.   Johnston’s best trick is the scene-setting.  The aforementioned atmospherics lay down a spooky vibe that enhances the outbursts of violence.  Each locale has a unique feel and tone.  The country is wild, rugged, darksome, inhabited with palpable dread; the manor is a Gothic enigma; the village is social comedy, a flock of nervous sheep awaiting slaughter; and London is a jungle of its own, a foggy madhouse in which the wolfman is both an abomination and part of its natural fauna.  One of the movie’s best shots is the sight of the creature after a rampage, hiding out in a deserted sewer opening beneath London Bridge, peacefully lapping water from the Thames (final proof dogs really will put anything in their mouths).

The emotional core of the movie turns out to be Emily Blount’s Gwen.  In the space between Del Toro’s underwritten hero and Hopkins’ close-to-hammy turn as Sir John, she steps in as a welcome middle term, a steady heroine stamped with as much sense as sensibility.  She’s got the looks of a Burne-Jones goddess and the moral rectitude of Dorothea Brooke (and a neck for a vampire flick, but never mind).  Apparently a decent businesswoman, she owns a curiosity shop in London and has enough self-determination to brave public censure by consorting with gypsies.  A real catch, then, this beautiful (and newly eligible) young woman, which is why one can well imagine Lawrence’s knuckle-biting anguish over her uncanny resemblance to his dead mother.  Howling’s the least he could do.  Blount carries the film to its climax—its real climax, not the rubbish one, the overdetermined confrontation between father and son—a tragic ending familiar to anyone who’s ever visited the back of the vet’s.  Her ability to register subtly the complexities of Gwen’s dilemma suggest that a deeper layer of drama was sacrificed for the monster movie chills.