Writer/director Leigh Whannell has made something of a name for himself in the horror genre. Back in 2020, his The Invisible Man took the old Universal Horror character out, dusted him off, and reinvented him as a symbol for the sorts of men who mistreat women and, for reasons of wealthy and power, seem to get away with it while gaslighting not only the woman herself but perhaps even the world around them. Since Universal found the “Dark Universe” didn’t really take off, the studio seems to be doing more creative, stand-alone reinventions of those old characters. And since Whannell had some real success with the Invisible Man, why not have him take a chance with another old Universal Monster?
Honestly, as a werewolf fan, the Wolf Man was always my favorite, so as I wait for my girlfriend to be free long to see some of the stuff I missed, I figured a man with a proven track record’s attempt to reinvent a classic movie monster might be worth a look.
Growing up in the middle of the Oregon forest, young Blake Lovell (Zac Chandler) was raised alone by his strict father Grady (Sam Jaeger). Grady is a hunter/survivalist type who lives “off the grid,” but there’s something out in the woods that seems to spook even him. Whatever it is, Blake gets only a couple glimpses of the thing that stands on its hind legs and may be connected to a missing hiker. Grady is determined to someday kill the thing, but his stern demeanor isn’t exactly making him father of the year. Fast forward thirty years and the now-adult Blake (Christopher Abbott) has a daughter of his own, Ginger (Matilda Firth), and aside from maybe a flash of temper here or there, he seems to be the exact opposite of the sort of father his own dad was. Sure, his marriage to wife Charlotte (Julia Gardner) could be better, but when news arrives that his long-missing father is dead, a trip to the Oregon forest to see the farm Blake grew up on as a sort of vacation seems like a good idea.
Naturally, it isn’t. On the ride out, Blake’s rental truck gets into an accident, and in the scramble to get out of the truck, Blake is scratched by something fast, mean, and bipedal. The family just barely manages to get to the old Lovell farmhouse ahead of the thing, but Blake isn’t doing well. Whatever that scratch is, it did something to the loving husband and father as his body begins to change slowly over the course of the night. As far as Blake and his family knows, they only have to hold out for daybreak and then get back to civilization somehow. But with Blake changing into something inside and the thing that attacked the family sniffing around outside the house, it may be a question of what gets to the family first: the monster outside or the one that may be forming inside.
First off, you may want to forget a lot of what you know about werewolves before you see this one. Much of the lore, which was largely invented for the 1941 original version of this story, is gone. There’s no full moon. Silver is not a weakness, and there’s no talk of wolfsbane. Essentially, the story boils down to the biggest theme of any werewolf story: that a good man, infected or cursed by something, will turn on his loved ones no matter how much he doesn’t want to. That much of the story is still intact. Heck, the werewolf in the movie looks more human than wolf, but that makes the creature look more like the one Lon Chaney Jr played in many respects. What works here is the main cast as Garner, Firth, and especially Abbott all plays their roles just right. Whannell also does a lot of interesting things, like shift things around to occasionally show the world from Blake’s perspective as he changes, with his vision making the familiar people around him seem more spectral while the words they speak no longer make sense to his ears. Say what you will about Whannell, but he knows how to inject tension into a scene, and he has interesting ideas on how to portray horror.
That said, the film is a bit flawed. While The Invisible Man was a lot more subtle in its themes of abuse and gaslighting, there’s pretty much no subtly to Wolf Man, to the point where the movie just outright spells out what the Wolf Man really represents at one point for slow audience members. Additionally, the movie can’t quite seem to make up its mind about certain things. The idea is that Blake has a bad temper that he’s been stamping his feelings down, but he doesn’t really show much of that. He and Charlotte have a conversation about how they are drifting apart, and that’s pretty much the sum total of the marital issues on display. Considering the first shot of the movie shows a wasp being swarmed by ants and the hunting trip between young Blake and his dad could have just gone with the theme that nature is dangerous, like many werewolf movies, but then goes in a different direction. There’s a lot to like about this Wolf Man, and I had a nice chat with a woman sitting nearby when it was over, but at the same time, there’s not much of The Invisible Man‘s subtly on display here, and that’s a disappointment.
Grade: C+
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