In theory, The Wolfman - a homage to the golden age of the Universal Studio monster with splashes of gore for that crucial post-Saw demographic – looked like the greatest idea since splitting the atom. Benicio del Toro (hirsute but miscast) stands in for Lon Chaney Jr. as Lawrence Talbot, an American accented prodigal son back in Victorian England to investigate the grisly mysterious death of his brother. Several game supporting players – including Anthony Hopkins’ landowning patriarch, Emily Blunt’s grieving fiancée, Hugo Weaving’s suspicious Scotland Yard peeler – ensure the scenery is more in danger of savage attack than the villagers, who, as the title suggests, are being picked off by a lycanthropic fiend.

For the first act, the echo of the sound stage and mannered performances keep us onside. Sadly, Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay shoehorns these pleasing rhythms into a preposterously overreaching reconfiguration of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. As the script proceeds to bark up the wrong tree, increasingly heightened performances only serve to illuminate the film’s growling flaws. The final hour is a confounded muddle enlivened occasionally by Rick Baker’s superb make up designs; it’s just enough to prevent The Wolfman from being a real howler.