Even a man who is pure in heart, And says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms And the autumn moon is bright.

Torn from the original movie, this bit of poetic foreshadowing opens the Benicio Del Toro-Anthony Hopkins remake of The Wolfman, and sets about explaining to us before we get there that it's not evil in a man's heart that makes a man into a wolf but rather nature itself. There's a lot of hurt in this movie that lends itself to an understanding of how our past shapes us and how we can choose to fight it or embrace it, and what it looks like when we're trying to deal with the tension between who we are and who we want to be.

Lawrence Talbot (Del Toro) returns to his ancestral home in Blackmoor at the insistent bidding of his brother's fiance, Gwen (Emily Blunt), after his brother is brutally murdered. There, he begins a quest to determine what happened to his brother in true murder-mystery style, replete with theories: a band of murderous gypsies, a bear, a werewolf. We already know that this is the second tragedy of the Talbot family that keeps the patriarch, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), holed up in their castle of a house; the lady Talbot committed suicide outside the house one night and Lawrence was soon on the scene.

Soon, Lawrence is bitten by the beast, and the wise, old gypsy woman refuses to put him out of his misery, stating that sometimes fate is a cruel one, even in the face of the suffering of many. But the catch the old woman utters is one we've heard before: he can be loosed by one who truly loves him. Still, the intrigue ratchets up as Lawrence digs deeper into his own backstory and the townspeople, including the dotty town reverend, are soon joined in their vendetta against the family by Scotland Yard Inspector Francis Aberline (Hugo Weaving in a delicious role). [The name Aberline is actually stripped from real life and fictional accounts of Jack the Ripper: it's the name of the Scotland Yard officer in charge of the Ripper cases.]

Speaking of the reverend before I move on, it is interesting that he preaches that the werewolf is loosed on their town because they have sinned and God is seeking vengeance. I'm sure that's fine historically, from a lovely post-Reformation take on life, but it goes dramatically against the Wolfman poem, and sounds a lot like the antithesis of what I know of God from reading the Bible. Instead, it sounds a lot like the stupidity I've heard mumbled when a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast, an earthquake rumbles in Haiti, or a natural disaster hits anyone except the "right." Seriously, doesn't that get a little bit old? There are phenomena in the world which we can't explain, or which come from nature's ebb and flow, and we want to make them about someone's sin? That, my friends, is just nutty.

Back to the action of the flick: I found the transformation of Lawrence into the wolf to be quite well done. After a six-year hiatus, Joe Johnston returned to direct a film that is quite different from his previous stuff (Hidalgo, Rocketeer, October Sky) and his in-asylum work is particularly chilling (no pun intended) as the special effects and violence ratchets up. It's no longer about the implied or the suspense of the thing, as the family's story and violence all explode all over the screen. Whatever restraint Johnston has used up until this point is gone, and the rest of the movie is a race to the finish, even with the unrated version clocking in a quarter of an hour longer.

What might be part-mystery, part-horror is all human condition study. What does it mean for us to know our story, and to embrace or reject it? How can we know what we're called to do and what we want to do, or what we've been trained to do versus who we think we are? How much of our blood, our DNA, reflects who we are and how much of it is up to nurture as well? With The Wolfman, there is a science versus faith debate, and everyone including Talbot loses. But more than that, there's a "nature" question at work here, as we see the condition of Talbot's life as a result of his genetics. The "fall" isn't his immediate thought but it's his to live with, and he can't completely escape the effects of its grip on his life.

It's a reminder in the end that prayer or a "pure heart" aren't enough; works in and of themselves can't save you. Instead, it's a nod toward "there but by the grace of God go I" that we all need someone to save us. We need something outside of ourselves to reach in and provide an overwhelming love that will liberate us from our curse. In the end, The Wolfman seeks that answer as well, just not in the way that you might expect.