'Wolf Man' Review: A Fresh Take on the Lycanthropic Legend
Leigh Whannell reinvigorates interest in the werewolf through his frequently thrilling Wolf Man, even if the movie stumbles as it reaches its uneventful conclusion.
In 2020, Leigh Whannell shook the horror sphere with his contemporary reimagining of The Invisible Man, transposing the rather hokey Universal classic monster into a parable of domestic violence. The film struck a chord with both critics and audiences, with many hailing it as one of the best films of that year. Granted, this was the last significant blockbuster to make an impact during a somewhat difficult time for many, but the movie has stood the test of time, even five years after its release, and could very well be the best Universal monster readaptation we’ve ever had.
Now, Whannell has returned to breathe new life into the world of Universal monsters, this time tackling George Waggner’s 1941 classic The Wolf Man. However, he and co-writer Corbett Tuck stray far away from the mythical status of Lycanthropy, which, in the case of Waggner’s original and Joe Johnston’s 2010 remake, was steeped in specific elements that would enact the transformation from a human, who was afflicted with a curse, into a wolf. In both films, the “rules” of the transformation were expressed through a short poem:
“Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.”
In the 2025 reimagining of another classic Universal monster, Whannell completely forgoes the mythology associated with the werewolf metamorphosis right from its opening scene. Some audience members may be alienated by Whannell Tuck’s creative liberties, such as no full moon being present in any scene as the most glaring example, and the werewolf appearing during broad daylight. However, the reinterpretation of this shift from man to wolf into not a curse but a rabid disease corrupting our soul makes perfect sense. An introductory text tells us that, in the remote mountains of Oregon, strange creatures lurk in the forest and can transmit their infection from one person to another by simply touching them – a bite is no longer necessary.
Perhaps Whannell and Tuck were thinking a lot about the COVID-19 pandemic at the time they wrote the script, or maybe it was a coincidence. Either way, I quickly bought into its new – and fresh – setting through a flashback in the 1990s where a young Blake Lovell (Zac Chandler) hunts deer with his father, Grady (Sam Jaeger), and learns how to survive in an unpredictably dangerous environment. As they walk in the woods, the two spot a strange creature that appears to be an animal with its guttural sounds and fast movements but has the (distanced) physical shape of a human.
Right then and there, Whannell and cinematographer Stefan Duscio make great use of claustrophobic camera frames that constantly block the wolf from the audience’s point of view but make us see slight hints that it may be near the characters. Of course, an immersive, throbbing sound mix (IMAX is a must) certainly helps make the audience feel every ounce of what the protagonist is experiencing, but the visual style Whannell develops within the movie – and its opening scene – feels genuinely innovative.
We then cut to thirty years later, with an older Blake (now played by Christopher Abbott) taking his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) to his father’s home after he received a death certificate from the state finally confirming Grady’s passing after he disappeared many years ago. However, their idyll is cut short when the family is stalked by a creature with similar features to the one Blake saw as a child, which scratches his arm during a tense confrontation. In the classic tale, the bite transposes the affliction from one human to the next. Now, it only needs to penetrate your bloodstream to infect your body and, in the process, corrupt your soul.
This is all relatively rudimentary, but Whannell’s visual and aural touch always ensures an active sense of immersion from beginning to end. Whether a fixed third-person view of the truck crash that sets the plot in motion or represents the internal viewpoint of Blake as he slowly morphs into a wolf, there’s legitimate formal innovation that deserves to be lauded and not shunned, especially in the synthetic moviegoing era we live in. Whannell and Duscio employ great use of expressive lighting in earlier scenes to prime audiences that an internal change occurs within Blake after his arm is scratched.
At first, he exhibits classic symptoms of an innocuous illness (nausea, vomiting, fever, and the like) until it becomes incredibly concerning: he throws up buckets of blood, begins to lose human teeth, and his senses of smell and perception also shift. He can hear each step a spider makes while climbing a wall, which sounds like an elephant thump, or smell odors his family can’t even realize are there. Of course, there’s also the physical transformation of it all, which unfolds in such thrilling fashion it honestly feels like the best werewolf reveal since John Landis changed how they were shaped in our collective imagination with An American Werewolf in London and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Obviously, Whannell possesses excellent skill in representing this shift with nifty (and decidedly gory) practical effects, but the real tragedy of its main narrative occurs within Blake’s internal perspective. Who was once a loving father who would stop at nothing to protect her daughter from harm’s way, can no longer understand what their family members are saying and, eventually, recognize them. Within his viewpoint, which Whannell frequently shifts to, dialogues from humans become mumbling gibberish, while their faces are completely erased from his memory (they become soulless, emotionless “objects”) once his transformation into a werewolf is complete.
Whannell has always been a great technician, and Wolf Man is no exception. However, the movie wouldn’t work as it does if Abbott isn’t fully committed to subjecting himself to intense physical acting. By the time he becomes the titular character, we already feel his plight after spending considerable time with him and his family, whom he loves so dearly that he can’t fathom becoming the person who will permanently scar the one he loves the most in the world. Garner and Firth do solid work, too, but Abbott is the real star of the picture. Even when he fully embodies the characteristics of the wolf, he’s not just roaring and violently chasing others away with little to no nuance in his portrayal, but his eyes attempt to wrestle what he’s internally fighting with what he’s forced to externally convey, which he sadly can’t control.
It’s difficult to represent such a push-pull between your human and monstrous self, but Abbott does it so well it’s hard not to tear up when Charlotte is forced to make a choice that could permanently change herself and Ginger. However, when this specific “choice” occurs, Whannell and Tuck decide that it’s time to end their movie as soon as possible instead of sitting with the characters now that the figure that wanted to ensure their safety the most has turned into the very thing he didn’t want to become in the first place.
There’s a metaphorical commentary one may extract from such a shift beyond the traditional tropes of Lycanthropy, and it’s precisely why Whannell doesn’t bathe in the pagantry of Waggner’s original, which Johnston expanded further when he remade the film in 2010 with Benicio del Toro. However, Whannell wants to use the mythical figure of the werewolf to discuss pressing issues as he did in 2020’s The Invisible Man. That movie focused on domestic abuse and trauma, while this one tackles parenting, masculinity, and how to protect your family when you can’t defend yourself from the horrors of the world. However, he fails to say anything when the movie wraps up with the coldest conclusion imaginable. Of course, this is the only scenario where such a production can end. However, previous iterations of The Wolf Man did at least say a bit about the corruptibility of humans, which this movie refuses to discuss and engage with.
Because of this, Whannell doesn’t entirely stick the landing, even if what comes before is one of the most inspired horror productions Blumhouse has released in ages. One eagerly anticipates what the Upgrade filmmaker will helm next, but there’s hope it won’t be another reimagining of a classic monster. With how he concludes Wolf Man, he’s better off leaving the next one to someone else, provided it won’t be retroactively made part of the Dark Universe…