Crying wolf

AS with most recent werewolf movies, this work of fiction has a bark that is far worse than its bite. In short, the film makes a lot of noise, but fails to do anything more than that.

Gone are the days when werewolf movies were terrifying and clever, it seems like the best of the great beast movies have come and gone, now the scariest thing we're left with is the shadow cast by a full moon.

The film begins with a young man named Lawrence Talbot, who is a brooding late 19th Century loner.

He was sent to an insane asylum by his stoic father and then shipped off to live with an aunt in the US, after witnessing his mother's death as a young boy.

However, Talbot, long-estranged from his father, gets called back to the isolated family estate by his brother's distraught fiancŽ Gwen after the love of her life is found brutally murdered, possibly by the outcast gypsies or perhaps ... some kind of wolf.

While the frantic villagers hunt for the culprit, Lawrence is bitten by the mysterious beast but miraculously survives. According to the gypsies, this is an irreversible fate worse than death (or even the latest Hannah Montana movie). The gypsies believe that the only way to save the town and themselves is to kill him.

Meanwhile, Talbot is stunned by his newfound physical prowess and suddenly has an uncontrollable animal instinct to mate with Gwen ... who although admittedly, is very attractive, is also deeply vacuous (who could have predicted that pretty girls often have no personality?)

Eventually a detective from Scotland Yard gets involved in the case, while the mayor decides the recent chaos is God's vengeance for man's sinful behavior and the locals accuse the gypsies of casting a curse ... all pretty far off the mark!

Now comes the part of the story that is so predicable, it's almost funny. When Talbot is finally revealed as the hairy culprit, he's sent back to the insane asylum and eventually takes it over, after objecting to (what appears to be) primitive waterboarding techniques being used to cure his 'mental' illness.

To describe parts of this film as hairy is not such much a clichŽ as it is an understatement. If you were a fan of An American Werewolf in London or the darkly funny Wolf, this film will almost certainly disappoint.

The only saving grace of this disaster of a movie is the impressive CGI during the transformation scenes, but all the special effects in the world cannot compensate for a poor plot and frankly lackluster dialogue.