Wolf Man

• Directed and Co-Written by Leigh Whannell
• January 17, 2025

A family man trying to save his wife and daughter from a werewolf becomes cursed himself and begins to change.

Directed and co-written by Leigh Whannell, Wolf Man was an attempt to reboot Universal’s Wolfman films though it has zero to do with the Lon Chaney classic other than a dude with supernatural Hypertrichosis. Beyond that not much else.

The first thing that struck me about this movie was that it was released in theaters. I’m not sure how that sounds to other people, but Wolf Man just does not feel like something that belongs as a theatrical experience. Going out to see a movie should be a bit of an experience. There should be something about the film that makes it special for the theater. This has all the earmarks of content for a streaming service and not that of something in a group context.

Like much ‘content’ it can be entertaining yet derivative, imaginative yet heartless. It goes through the motions to get to the credits but has no effort to be special. It lacks thrills or emotions that would be heightened by seeing it with a group or simply on the big screen by yourself. If anything, it probably should’ve been released on a streaming service. There is nothing that makes this worth the small fortune one drops at a theater these days, but it is certainly worth a warm cup of coffee consumed while in your jammies. That’s not to call it a bad movie. There is nothing genuinely special here.

We get the cliché couple in a troubled marriage thinking that whatever thing they are going to do next (here it is a trip the abandoned and isolated farm of the husband Blake’s (Christopher Abbott) missing father) will start to fix things rather than talking and working out their differences in or out of a therapy session. To add some story complications, they bring their daughter along who sounds like she is more in tune with the marital situation than the adults are.

Some vague need to settle the estate of Blake’s missing father is what drives them out there though considering daddy has been MIA for decades I question all that. If you can’t figure out what happened to daddy, then the reveal of the truth will come as quite the surprise. There are no real surprises in Wolf Man. Nothing tried and true done well either.

There is a touch of predictability here. Certain things can be seen coming from a mile away. I had a rough idea of how the finale would play out long before the movie even got there. Blake and his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) have a bit of a thing they share which is sweet when introduced but when you’re introducing bits like that in a movie it generally plays out in the climax. Especially when you take time to go into depth on it.

The most special aspect we see is the transformation from Blake’s side. We see that he is still there, but the change makes him more creature than man to the point he can no longer understand his wife even as he tries to intelligently communicate with her. His words are garbled gibberish in a way that Charlotte’s (Julia Garner) are to him.

Most of the movie is split between watching Blake get sicker and Charlotte and Ginger running away in terror. It is done rather evenly making the film about both thus muting any scares or sense of terror. Humanizing a villain is a bad idea in a horror movie.

I had trouble believing Julia Garner as Charlotte. When she looked at Christopher Abbott as Blake her face communicated “Eww! Gross!” She carried that same expression a touch in Weapons. It doesn’t help when she’s sharing an emotional moment over their failing marriage caused by his lack of work and her inability to feel success as a reporter or write her own book. I am left thinking she would rather be alone than with Blake. There is also no connection between momma Charlotte and daughter Ginger. She does not hate the kid, but it is more like a character protecting a child because they are a child and not their child.

Director Leigh Whannell does attempt to use shadow for terror purposes like classic films might but in color that is a tough task to make work. Like AVPR: Aliens vs Predator-Requiem, it gets hard to see the action. A balance needs to be struck like in Alien. I had trouble knowing where characters were or what they looked like!

Nothing is great but everything is okay. The acting is okay. The direction is okay and the story is okay. The problem is aside from the guy trying to chew on his own arm it is all pretty forgettable. It’s not so forgettable you’re bored while watching it. You just might be hard-pressed remembering character names and specific events.

Wolf Man is no gorefest, but an entertaining though unremarkable bit of supernatural storytelling. Worthy of streaming.