Benicio Del Toro stars as The Wolfman in this year's remake of the 1941 classic.

“The Wolfman” is a cliché-laden genre flick that floods its scenes with gore, yet is so predictable that it comes away bloodless.

What strikes me most about this remake is that the premise of The Wolfman appears simple enough for any director to build a masterpiece around it.

In the Blackmoor Woods, on a dark night in 1891, a man holding a lantern – soon identified as Ben Talbot – walks through the woods, armed with a pistol. No more than 30 seconds into the sequence, Talbot is sliced and eviscerated by a werewolf, after which the intro – designed as a reference to 1940s title cards, with the movie title engraved on a tombstone – flashes by.

The first half of the movie moves at an artificially fast pace, which only highlights the sedate acting and almost nonexistent character development. A good part of the movie, in fact, felt more like bad high school theater than a Hollywood feature film. The acting and the script would be acceptable for a B-grade creature feature, but not for a decadent, mainstream, 21st-century film.

Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) roams England to learn more about the death of his brother Ben, only to be mauled by the werewolf and return to Talbot Hall, his father’s residence.

We know so little about Lawrence Talbot that the attack carries no significance; throughout the movie, we see Talbot degenerate into a murdering werewolf, but what did he degenerate from? Why should we care? Lawrence struts and frets through most of his time on the screen, brooding like a Twilight vampire under the watch of the stone-faced Gwen. Like the rest of the movie, it only makes sense and becomes remotely memorable toward the end of the movie, when the full moon is almost constantly shining.

Without character development, the early scenes of Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt) or Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) or Singh (Art Malik) are meaningless filler, like styrofoam packing peanuts in Pandora’s Box.

Only when the movie turns sinister does it pick up the momentum it should have built from the beginning. Without spoiling the plot, I can say that Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Sir John Talbot – bitter, quick-witted and gracefully evil – is as predictable as the rest of this movie, yet stands out because of those indescribable glimmers of wisdom that are almost expected of Welsh actors past their prime. At the start of the movie, Talbot portrays the same wisdom and fatherly demeanor that set Sir Alec Guinness apart as Obi-Wan Kenobi…then turns that demeanor on its side and tears its guts out for all to see.

This film and its characters are only entertaining when the moon is full and werewolves are prowling.

Inspector Francis Aberline (Hugo Weaving), like Hopkins’ John Talbot, carries his predictable, under-developed character as far as it could go; his performance is second only to Hopkins. Aberline himself is a fascinating character: at first a villain who should be a hero, then an anti-hero who should be a villain. Of the many gun-toting Englishmen to confront the werewolves, Aberline is the most competent – and the only one who is properly developed.

Even the key lines of the film are seemingly muttered by the actors, most of whom perform as wooden archetypes. Though it’s good that this movie does not bring a great beginning to a terrible finish, the pacing works against both the acting and the script, which aren’t good enough to support this movie in the first place.

Though The Wolfman’s visuals are dominated by a pickled, over-the-top representation of late 19th-century London, the videography, set designs, and costumes are quite well done. Where the pacing fails, the movie almost makes up for it with innovative angles and techniques that bring back memories of the silent films and 1940s classics that inspired this remake. Much of the film, however, probably would have been better shown in black-and-white than in high-definition color.

In certain scenes, such as Lawrence’s flashbacks and a few fight scenes, the CGI detracts from the storytelling. For the most part, however, the CGI werewolves are The Wolfman’s only redeeming factor. How can anyone turn away from a pair of werewolves fighting to the death in a burning mansion?

The one unpredictable part of the movie is that there are no heroes – definitely not Lawrence, not Gwen, and not even Aberline. There is no victory, no happy ending; it ends only with the moon, the woods, and a howl. Such endings are how sequels are born.

This film is entertaining, yet shallow;  mostly mediocre, yet also surprisingly good.

To be fair, The Wolfman is a straightforward creature horror movie, and it holds its own in that sense. Where it needs to entertain, it does entertain, and that’s good enough.

Even then, it could have been – should have been – more than a tribute to the original; it deserved to be a grade-A classic movie in its own right. Instead, it became an entertaining and overpriced B-movie. Maybe the sequel will pick up the slack.