Thursday, February 13, 2025

Movie Review: ‘Wolf Man’ is a Macabre Misfire


Director: Leigh Whannell
Writer: Leigh Whannell, Corbett Tuck
Stars: Julia Garner, Leigh Whannell, Christopher Abbott

Synopsis: A family at a remote farmhouse is attacked by an unseen animal, but as the night stretches on, the father begins to transform into something unrecognizable.


When Leigh Whannell submitted his first Universal Monsters reboot with The Invisible Man in 2020, many, including myself, were surprised with that film’s tenacity and singularity. Whannell really swung for the fences with what ended up being one of the better genre reimaginings of the last decade. That one is a gem, truly, and it gave audiences a million-and-one reasons to look out for what Whannell would do next.

Blumhouse's Wolf Man Reboot Photo Reveals Sneak Peek at Werewolf  Transformation

But while he may have stayed on the remake track with Wolf Man, little else remains the same. Not to mention the absence of “the” from the title… we should’ve known this wasn’t going to work. Wolf Man, just Wolf Man, indeed feels like it was made by the director of The Invisible Man, though a version of him that made this film first. It uses the same formula and many of the same elements, only in more primal, less refined form. 

Where The Invisible Man utilized tact and meticulous tension, Wolf Man substitutes dim lights and clockwork clichés. It’s a simple story about a man who, in an effort to work on his marriage and heal his family, leaves New York and hauls his wife and daughter to his deceased father’s wilderness estate in Oregon.

In Whannell’s patterned effort to relay what has been historically conceptualized as fantasy through a realistic lens, the wolf man in this story is the product of an animalistic disease. Blake (Christopher Abbott), the film’s dad, quickly comes face-to-face with one of these monsters before he can even set foot in his father’s home. What expectedly ensues is madness, although uneven and uncalculated in execution.

Wolf Man Director Issues Warning That Not Everyone Will Like the Creature  Design (But for Good Reason) - ComicBook.com

Whannell clearly wishes to ground the wolf man’s (as he’ll be referred to in order to avoid spoilers) transformation in emotion and slow-burn tragedy, and he primarily does so by spending much of the first act fully focused on the film’s on-sleeve heart. Yet these efforts are mostly in vain, due greatly to a series of awkward dialogue exchanges and predictable progressions that don’t allow any of the characters at hand to break through and make any emotional impact.

When you’re supposed to tether to one of these personalities and connect, you’ll be more likely to dwell on a stunted line-read, or be trying to figure out where you’ve heard those words before. There are a few moments of recognizable impact, if not only for the moving performances within them, but you can only do so much with words that have been uttered a million times before. 

You’ve already met these characters in different movies, and you’ve gone on this journey, too. Wolf Man fails to find footing in this regard. Where it will get you though, is the violence. Visually, not only is this a (mostly) interesting outing, but it gets downright gnarly, too. Whannell’s past with the Saw series has perhaps never been more apparent in his subsequent work than it is here.

Film Preview: Wolf Man (2025) – Cinema Sight by Wesley Lovell

The camera never looks away from any gash or gristle, and in the absence of any real memorable set-piece, this is an aspect you can hang onto. But a question that is often asked about the Saw movies arises here: how far can that take a film? The answer is, most often in this film, not very far. While Wolf Man may succeed in forcing you to look away and grit your teeth the first time around, once you leave, you aren’t given any reason to come back.

None of the action sets itself apart and, again, the narrative and character work chart familiar territory, and familiar territory only. The film is structured to emphasize events that don’t earn that emphasis; which may be due to a combination of many errors of varying severity, but either way, the final product is marred as a result.

Unfortunately, Wolf Man is quintessential January horror, despite the promise of the names and pasts attached to it. Leigh Whannell is an excruciatingly talented and imaginative individual whose name looks unfit attached to this film.

It isn’t a complete loss – with a group of friends, you may even have some fun – but there’s nothing about Wolf Man that begs to be revisited, nor anything that suggests a strong immediate impact. A disappointing, forgettable anomaly.

Grade: C

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