Wolf Man (2025) Universal/Horror RT: 103 minutes Rated R (bloody violent content, grisly images, some language) Director: Leigh Whannell Screenplay: Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck Music: Benjamin Wallfisch Cinematography: Stefan Duscio Release date: January 17, 2025 (US) Cast: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger, Benedict Hardie, Ben Prendergast, Milo Cawthorne, Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly.
Rating: ** ½
When Universal abandoned their Dark Universe franchise after the critical and commercial failure of 2017’s The Mummy (the one with Tom Cruise), they decided to make standalone adaptations featuring their classic monsters. The Invisible Man, which came out right before the pandemic shut down cinemas for most of 2020, is brilliant in every conceivable way. Director Leigh Whannell delivers scares and thrills while making a bold statement about abusive relationships and the psychological scars they leave on victims. It’s still one of the best horror films of the decade.
I was hoping Whannell would do the same with Wolf Man, a total reimagining of the 1941 horror classic starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the titular werewolf. Sadly, he doesn’t. He gets some of it right, but misses the mark in other areas making for a rather frustrating viewing experience. The screenplay by Whannell and Corbett and actress Corbett Tuck (Insidious: Chapter 3) is one of those half-baked deals that fails to connect the dots. He introduces ideas like familial trauma and the cycle of abuse only to go nowhere with them. It, along with the shallow characterizations, renders the whole affair emotionally weightless.
Wolf Man starts off strong with a father (Jaeger, Parenthood) and son (Chandler) hunting for deer in the woods surrounding their isolated home in Oregon. Dad has something of a temper. He’s constantly on the boy about being aware of his surroundings and the potential danger around him. During their excursion, they encounter some kind of mysterious creature lurking among the trees. Whatever it is, it isn’t friendly. They make it home alive, but the vicious beast is still out there.
The story jumps ahead thirty years where we find the now-grown boy Blake (Abbott, Kraven the Hunter) living in San Francisco with his family. He’s a stay-at-home to a young daughter, a feisty little girl named Ginger (Firth, Hullraisers), while his wife Charlotte (Garner, Inventing Anna) works long hours as a journalist. Her workaholic ways have put a strain on their marriage.
Blake receives a letter informing him that his estranged father has been declared legally dead after going missing some years earlier. By way of trying to mend their marriage, Blake proposes a long vacation to his childhood home to pack up his father’s belongings. En route, they have an accident when Blake swerves to avoid hitting some kind of creature standing in the middle of the road. He gets scratched by said creature while trying to get out of the truck. Although he manages to get his family to safety in his dad’s house, it’s too late for Blake. He starts to transform into a monster, a wolf man to be exact.
This is where Wolf Man succeeds. The slow and gradual werewolf transformation is NOT achieved through CGI. It’s all makeup and prosthetics. If I had to compare it to something, it would NOT be An American Werewolf in London, the pinnacle of werewolf movies. It’s more like 1986’s The Fly with Blake’s teeth falling out and fingernails falling off. It’s all gooey and gross. That’s not all; the FX team utilizes vocal distortion to convey Blake’s diminishing ability to understand human language. They also allow us to see and hear things the way a wolf would. It all makes for a fairly frightening monster. See what you can do with old school FX methods?
Wolf Man has atmosphere to spare thanks to cinematographer Stefan Duscio who makes excellent use of location. The woods are creepy, dark and deep, emphasis on the dark. The tension caused by waiting for the monster to emerge from the blackness is palpable. Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s happening, but I should think the characters have the same issue. Sound plays a big part as well. These woods are spookily quiet which makes the sudden rustling of leaves and branches all the more unsettling.
For all its artistic merits, Wolf Man has some serious narrative flaws. It feels like a lot of it was rushed. The characters are thinly drawn. We don’t get to know too far beyond a superficial level. We know that Blake didn’t have an idyllic childhood and is trying hard to be a better father to Ginger. This entails keeping his temper in check and watching his language. That’s about as deep as it gets. We know precious little about Charlotte beyond her workaholic tendencies. Ginger is a kid who loves her dad. Those are the only characters of consequence other than Blake’s dad.
I give the actors credit for trying their best despite having too little to work with. Abbott is okay as a man slowly succumbing to his primal urges. Could this be a metaphor of some kind? Possibly, but Wolf Man is too shallow to say. We get two versions of Garner here, unhappy and scared. She never looks like she’s sure of what or who she’s playing. It’s like she’s lost in the woods. Firth is fine. Ginger is the kind of kid who knows how to operate, rationalizing that hot chocolate is a drink not a dessert so her dad will buy her ice cream. She looks suitably scared when it’s called for. Firth does her job competently.
Wolf Man will never be regarded as a horror classic like the OG. It’s also not a stinker like most horror movies that get released in January. It works best as a gross body horror film even though it has nothing on David Cronenberg’s early work or last fall’s The Substance. It’s sufficiently scary in terms of creature design and atmosphere. It keeps you interested enough. It’s too bad Whannell flubs it with the unwritten screenplay and underdeveloped characters. It would have been a winner.
