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The new Wolf Man has a lot to live up to. Not the least of which is almost 100 years of culture heaped upon the movies. Does the new movie live up to all of that?

To start, it’s a creature movie. Not a slasher. Not a demonic possession. Creature horror seems to be one of the lesser sub-genres of horror, but it’s one of my personal favorites. But it can get messy. The creature quite often doesn’t any respect when seen up close. Not that the special effects are bad, it’s just hard to make a creature look good when focused on. that’s a mistake many make.

CGI usually costs too much for small budget horror. And if done badly, it can look worse.

Then you need to have a good story. Too often, when doing a remake, filmmakers try to make it modern and more interesting. And that usually flops and becomes cornier than the originals. It is difficult to take a classic and ‘redo’ it and be successful.

But guess what – if you just do a shot for shot remake of the original, it will probably flop also. I mean, if we want to watch the original, we’ll just watch the original. So why watch the lesser version?

With all of this going against it, why redo such a classic movie? It is a 100 year old black and white, so if anything is looking for a remake, this would be it. Plus its part of Blumhouse’s overall dark universe, which I applaud, even if it’s a risky venture.

The last question – is it a good movie, a good remake? The story isn’t an exact of the original, but its ok. There is nothing outrageous or super extraordinary, but that actually works in its favor. its a solid story with few surprises. The bit of twist was pretty easy to see, but didn’t detract from it. I think they could have made it a bit stronger to lead up to it. Overall, the storyline just missing being great anywhere. It’s solid but maybe could have used one more spruce up.

How does the creature look? I mean, the other wolf man movies usually show the victim transforming. Often this is the downfall because it gets a bit cheesy. This doesn’t show the transformation as one step, but each scene he’s a bit more of the wolf. But he never gets to be a completely hairy wolf guy. He stays a bit more human, but that plays into the storyline with him struggling to retain his humanity. And I thought he looked fantastic. Not cheesy, not overdone.

Basically, I enjoyed this redone creature horror. The other 2 movies in this dark universe – Invisible Man and Fantasy Island – I didn’t enjoy as much. My son thinks Invisible Man was better, but I liked this one. It’s solid but not perfect. Worth seeing but not one of my all time favorites.