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Making a nicely produced piece of classic horror, if there is such a thing, director Joe Johnston (October Sky, Jumanji, The Rocketeer) depicts the son (Benicio Del Toro) of an eccentric gentleman (Anthony Hopkins) in the 1891 British countryside as they are ensnared in an Oedipal psychodrama that leads to romantic love, confrontations with religious fundamentalists, and the breathless sight of a rampaging werewolf in London.

Universal’s The Wolfman is not my cup of tea, typically, and viewers should be forewarned that the frights are deployed without warning and the blood and guts are on ample display, but for what it is, Mr. Johnston, one of Tinseltown’s top creators of exciting adventure, delivers a true thriller. Shot in black and gray, and shrouded in fog, its point that man and monster are sometimes indistinguishable comes early and often in the form of a mythical beast that is one of the screen’s best werewolves. The detail in this creature is amazing; he’s a ferocious beast with vaguely human characteristics, not an overdone computer image on steroids. Resembling Michael Landon’s classic werewolf, this wolf is cunning, nimble, and powerful, swiping with his deadly claws, tearing limbs like tissue paper, and sprinting while upright or chasing on all four legs.

With various literary and visual references to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, silver bullets, gargoyles, and the “power of Satan”, The Wolfman grabs a hold and doesn’t let go, with Mr. Hopkins simply devouring every scene as the morally monstrous father, Del Toro as Lawrence, an heroic American trying to set things right after a terrible childhood trauma, Emily Blunt (Dan in Real Life) as the young, nubile beauty whose husband was killed by the werewolf, Hugo Weaving (V for Vendetta) as a policeman and Geraldine Chaplin (Tonia in Doctor Zhivago) as a gypsy.

While a religious zealot warns that the wolf represents man’s pride and alternately urges the besieged villagers to loathe themselves, an intellectual who’s more monstrous than the werewolf (and whose demise is too good for him) enters the picture as the policeman persistently observes, tracks, and hunts the creature. Characters and plot are fully engaging and seeing Anthony Hopkins in this voracious role is worth the admission price alone (don’t bring the kids) for those who can stand the horror. The only downside other than the gore is a throwaway servant character, a Sikh “warrior of God”. Blunt is good, Del Toro is excellent as usual, and Weaving’s earnestly intelligent detective puts last year’s manic Sherlock Holmes to shame. The Wolfman’s theme that man is essentially self-made, even when faced by monsters that are not, is expressed in an exchange between Del Toro’s thespian character and Blunt’s grieving widow, when he comes upon a waterfall and recalls it as a place of refuge and she asks, “from what?” He answers, “you mean from whom.” This Wolfman has a mind of his own. But be prepared to close your eyes.

Director Lasse Hallstrom’s first movie in four years, Dear John, feels half-hearted. Working with a weak screenplay by Jamie Linden (who wrote the entertaining We Are Marshall), based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook), Hollywood’s best director starts this sappy love letter with refined, beautiful scenes of young lovers on a beach in Charleston. As the story of two self-sacrificing lovers implodes, so does Dear John. Left in the rubble is an empty note; an exchange between selfless characters that compete to do themselves in.

That might be alright if the result was deeply involving, as is typically the case with Lasse Hallstrom’s movies, such as Casanova, The Cider House Rules, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, My Life as a Dog, An Unfinished Life, or his best picture, Chocolat. Instead, we get vacant Savannah and blank John, each carefully stripped of the pursuit of happiness and saddled with one act of sacrifice after another. The only person in the movie with something like a sense of purpose is Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) and her goal is to open a camp for the sake of kids with “special needs”, not necessarily because she loves the work; she says they need help and Savannah exists to serve others. So does everyone else in this sad, forlorn movie. John (Channing Tatum) serves in the military merely as something to do and, later, as an evasion of reality. Watching this pair deny themselves any act of selfishness for two hours is like watching a slug race.

With a theme that one must live for the sake of others, anyone can see where the plot will lead. But it isn’t convincing in Mr. Hallstrom’s hands. He can’t resist focusing on life, which means showing young lovers in lingering close-ups and offering singularly meaningful pieces of property, such as rare coins that are rich with history or a dish with a simple yet elegant pattern. His tendency to evoke people in motion, fleetingly in love with life, people, places, and things, only makes one impatient with the zombies these characters become. John used to be a tough guy; he serves in the Army and likes to surf and that’s about it. Savannah is a rich kid; she goes to college, builds houses for charity, and wants to serve the disabled. They talk, act, and live like brochures for national service. They have no motives, only slogans. They both lack an ego.

Add an apparently unemployed family friend (Henry Thomas) and his son, John’s father (The Visitor’s Richard Jenkins), and America’s worst act of war (appallingly described as “buildings falling” with no mention of war, enemies, or Islam), mix in cancer, autism, and a guitar-driven soundtrack more suited to 1970s southern California than early 2000s South Carolina and Dear John disappoints. Seyfried (Mamma Mia!) and Tatum (Stop-Loss, Coach Carter) have decent moments as they write letters across a jumbled timeline but they are generally wooden.

Holding up the morals of the Peace Corps as an ideal is, it turns out, terribly undramatic. Having the hero pummeled into despair by an aimless hippie, pleading for her to “just tell me what do you want me to do?” after being shot by unnamed enemies is not romantic. Even the presumed “benefits” of altruism don’t come off: one never sees Savannah’s completed charity house nor those who will own it.

Lasse Hallstrom remains one of most talented artists in pictures. He is a masterful storyteller and he makes marvelous movies that celebrate life. Dear John is not one of them. Here, Mr. Hallstrom discussed his Johnny Depp/Leonardo diCaprio movie, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and, here, he talked to me about his brilliant Robert Redford movie, An Unfinished Life. I recommend seeing either of those or almost any of his other pictures, until his next, highly anticipated work.