Every few years there’s an ever changing fad in Hollywood. Whether the fad is on dystopian stories, Sci-fi, dogs or the most recent, Vampires; we always see the trickle-down effect. It starts in the most impressionable of sources. Books.

For example for the last few years there has been countless books on Vampires churned out by major publishing houses. Seeing how the public is eating it up, Hollywood then starts the movie fad on Vampires. From these, TV shows come out….video games and pretty much a general interest on all things vampire follows.

We are currently experiencing the ebbing of the vampire wave. Thankfully.

It’s not that vampire legends bother me. I like vampires. I like Goth. The problem that I’ve had it with all these “pretty boy vamps”. I like my vampires to be a fearful, anemic-looking human/fruit-bat abomination. Not some anemic-looking guy who looks like he shops at Abercrombie  & Fitch and HotTopic.

Well thankfully the vampire fad is fading. So what’s the next new craze? Werewolves. Naturally.Werewolves and Vampires  have always been paired up in the movies and stories. One usually precedes the other. Remember Silver Bullet and Lost Boys?

There are two things that really scare me. Zombies and Werewolves. No, I don’t believe that they exist, but the fear comes from childhood trauma I would like to think. Maybe I watched one too many movies. I always imagined that there would be no way in hell that I would survive a werewolf encounter. Zombies? yea no problem, but a werewolf?

I think fear in werewolves stems from man’s primal fear against the canids. They are more powerful, stronger, faster and vicious than man. Since the beginning we had to fight them for survival so it only follows that when legends of human/wolf combos started appearing in texts, man’s imagination (and fear) grew.

We are now seeing the posters for the new movie The Wolfman spring up. Directed by Joe Johnston and starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins, this movie looks amazing. Although I always say that too much CG ruins a movie, I can’t help but be in awe when watching the trailer for the film.Even though the trailer does not show enough of the werewolf, it sill looks pretty creepy in my opinion. Of course there are so many movies from the 80s about werewolves, excluding TeenWolf, that do a good job in accentuating that fear, that this new Wolfman movie must capture. I think a good test would be comparing the fear factor of “An American Werewolf in London” to 2010’s “The Wolfman”. I don’t care what you say, the werewolf’s howling in “American Werewolf in London” has to be one of the most terrifying sounds I’ve ever heard. It’s an excellent howl.

Get ready guys! 2010 will eventually be the werewolf year.