He was a semi-normal Human who was infected with Cursed Werewolf blood, hence he became a Magical Werewolf.
As Hollywierd has long shown, such creatures transform rather than shift, even though the transformation looks like a shift onscreen.
What's the difference? Van Helsing wasn't the first to keep personal jewelry when he got fuzzy... several other movies did the same thing.
(It's called failure of the Continuity Department to do their job during production, usually because of budgetary constraints.)
There seems even to be a sort of logic behind it: Mass must be less than one ounce, it must be in full contact with the skin of the transformee, and it must be of metal. Anything else gets shredded, busted, or otherwise lost.
Where the
SHIFT is a physical thing, Metamorphery (?) on a massive scale; Magical
TRANSFORMATION is a hit or miss affair governed by whatever system was used to afflict the "Curse" in the first place. The speed of the transformation is usually governed by the Special Effects budget and the number of appliances or CA scenes involved.
Shifting is will-controlled, Transformations are controlled by external forces like the Moon, anger, fear, (stress-agents) or the greatest stress-agents of all, the Script, the Director, and the Budget.
