“It’s not what’s outside that should scare you.”
I have to admit that I wasn’t thrilled by this movie through the marketing campaign. I didn’t think it looked good and no one involved got me excited but I found myself with nothing to do on Wolf Man‘s opening day and I wanted to see a movie. Even though Leigh Whannell‘s The Invisible Man (2020) wasn’t my cup of tea, I decided to give old Wolf Man a shot.
Here, Whannel offers his take on another classic Universal Monster as we open on a title sequence about a legend based on people who are like wolves. Next, we are in a dreamlike forest as we meet a militaristic father going on a hunting trip with his son. They encounter something that appears to not be fully animal but also not quite man and nearly come face to face with the being. Fast forward 30 years and we catch up with the little boy, Blake played by Christopher Abbott, who is a struggling writer and having troubles in his marriage to Julie Garner. He receives news of his estranged father being officially announced deceased and he convinces his wife to take a much-needed trip to reconnect and clean out his father’s farm in Oregon. Once in Oregon, Blake and his family are attacked and run off the road by a similar creature. While his family makes it to his father’s farm, Blake is wounded and starts to get sick, but his sickness becomes dangerous and inhuman while his family is suddenly no longer safe around him.
Whannel’s Wolf Man does not have any of the traditional werewolf lore such as no full moon transformation and no silver bullets being a weakness. What we get is more aligned with Cronenberg’s The Fly as a horrible transition of a devastating illness of a loved one. This is one of the better aspects of the film. We witness his slow descent which resembles someone succumbing to dementia. He seemingly can’t speak or recognize his wife or daughter. Whannel shows us Blake’s perspective of not understanding what is happening making the ordeal heartbreaking…or it would have if we got to spend any time with these characters before things escalated. Instead, I never fully feel like Blake and Charlotte are a real couple. Charlotte definitely doesn’t feel like a mom. Don’t worry the kid feels like a daughter though.
Blake’s transformation into this rabid, hairy Neanderthal is brutal and disgusting at times. Although I enjoyed the use of practical effects for the design, it’s ultimately underwhelming. They decided to go for more of the human look with a heavy underbite akin to Jack Nicholson in 1994’s Wolf. The creature is more effective when it isn’t seen like going back to an earlier scene where young Blake and his father are hiding from the monster in a deer blind that is masterfully done. You hear the creature snarling as it claws at the wood paneling and you see its breath to signify just how close it is to jumping on its prey.
The biggest part of the film’s charm is its sound design. It’s a movie designed for theaters. Not only is this because of the creature’s sounds, but the forest of the farm in Oregon has a life of its own with crackling thunder, the sound of rain falling all around you, and trees creaking. Sadly, that is about all the positive I can give to the film as once Blake fully turns the story begins to stall.
The story gets him back to Oregon easily enough, but the screenplay can’t decide if Blake still recognizes his family or not. He has this weird wolf vision that allows him to see things in the dark and he suddenly can’t understand English. Everything sounds like Charlie Brown gibberish. Blake has a deep connection with his daughter and Wolf Man builds up this, “I love you 3000” moment between them, but when that moment inevitably comes it falls flat. Blake goes from saving his family one minute to wanting to kill them the next. The writing and dialogue really let the actors down as Garner and Abbott do their best with what they were given even though they are miscast and never feel like a real couple. Abbott has the kindest eyes of any werewolf ever and Garner helps carry the emotional weight even though I can’t buy her as a mom.
Perhaps my favorite part of the entire movie is when it went full-blown Saw in one scene. I see you, Leigh. Ultimately, Wolf Man was a letdown overall as it fell into some typical horror cliches with some obvious jump scares and “why the hell are you doing this and not that” type of shenanigans. The writing and the creature design really fumbled what could have been a solid horror movie.
