As a horror icon, the Wolfman gets no respect. In theory, he's the embodiment of a great horror concept-the literal manifestation of the Beast within, who busts out every other fortnight to rip the shit out of Victorian aristocrats or horny teens in Oldsmobiles-and yet in American cinema he's given the strict Michael J. Fox treatment. In order to get a werewolf taken in any way seriously, American directors have to send them to various catacombs and ossuaries in London or Paris, and even then, they're just not scary. In fact, the scariest werewolf movie to come out in the last 15 years was about a heavily ax-wounded 16-year-old girl (if you have not seen Ginger Snaps and you have a vagina, consider this your mandate). The Wolfman just doesn't do it for us-there are consequences to having that much back hair.

As such, the reincarnation of the classic Wolfman (in theaters today) had a good shot at full image reinvention. First of all, it's set in London, thereby solving the Euro problem. Plus now we have all sorts of things they didn't have when the original (which was made in 1941) came out. Like Benicio Del Toro. And CGI! LOTS of motherfucking CGI!

Of course, the production team had to go all purist on us: The creature effects were done by an actual makeup artist, meaning they WERE NOT CGI. Which, on the one hand, assures the preservation of all that's pure and sacred in horror special effects-but on the other hand means that the post-transformation Benicio could pretty much be a stand-in for Teen Wolf at the prom. There is only so much one can do when one is dealing with a real corporeal human body, as opposed to the wondrous artificiality of a digital creation (hey, why not make the Wolfman bright blue and diamond-freckled? Sure, why the hell not?!).

And so The Wolfman falls into the same trap as its predecessors: it's not that scary. Yes, the gore is decent-but if James Cameron's giving us nine-feet-tall blue chicks hair-fucking giant trees, then those entrails BETTER look good as they exit the belly of yet another pasty landowner. Gore is a necessary with the Wolfman; it's the visual depiction of just how beastly he becomes. The gore is what draws us in, connects us to the darker place that good horror films take us-one day we too could succumb to our animal urges, and all the messy carnage they demand. That openly-sneezing dude on the subway or the lady who sex-grunts on the treadmill next to you-neither would stand a chance if The Beast Within had its way. In this sense, the film needed MORE wolf slaughter; the one truly satisfying scene involves Benicio being "examined" as a mental patient by a class full of priggish med students and their monocle-wedged-in-his-anus professor. Who wouldn't want to see a monster unleashed on these supercilious pricks?

But alas, the gore is sparse and the acting hack-jobbed. On the up side, the movie looks beautiful, in the same way Helena Bonham Carter looks beautiful-pale and chiseled and about to collapse from rickets. The moody malevolence of Victorian London is a stunning backdrop, and the sets make Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes look like King Ralph. But you can't cast Benicio as a pedigreed British gentleman, let alone a professional Shakespearean actor-in fact it's not clear what you CAN cast him as these days, other than a Fenster Redux. Plus at this point Anthony Hopkins has phoned in his "Stroke-Addled Patriarch" role from Legends of the Fall so many times, you're half expecting him to wave a paycheck in front of the camera.

And there's another inconvenient thing about remaking a 1940s movie: us womynfolk are so fucking demanding these days. We want a female role that doesn't mash every stereotype and bromide cliché into Cute-Girl-Character pudding. Emily Blunt is unequivocally awesome-she can pull any movie from the pit of suckery, even if it contains Anne Hathaway and 600 pairs of shoes.

But sloppy writing traps her in the tired cavity of "I'm irresistibly drawn to this dangerous man for no apparent reason and I ignore every sign that something is amiss and oh look I'll ride out on the full moon and maybe get fed my own pancreas, all because I must SAVE my doomed hero!" Aren't we past the assumption that women want to die for love? Hasn't that whole meme been securely stowed in the bowels of antiquation? I mean, if there's a third-party aggressor in the picture, maybe I'd push my man out of the way and take a bullet-but if Mr. Fantastic turns into a bloodthirsty Hellbeast bent on carpeting the woods with my intestines, fuck if I'm not hauling out the shotgun. Because Lord knows, The Beast can live in ovaries, too.

Melissa Lafsky will probably not date you if you turn into a monster once a month.