WOLF MAN (2025)
Starring Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger, Benedict Hardie, Ben Prendergast, Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly, Milo Cawthorne and Leigh Whannell.
Screenplay by Leigh Whannell & Corbett Tuck.
Directed by Leigh Whannell.
Distributed by Universal Pictures. 103 minutes. Rated R.
A few years ago, writer/director Leigh Whannell added some life to the updated Universal Studio Monsters film series with the surprisingly good modern update of The Invisible Man. This was especially surprising because it was sort of a belated follow-up to the just awful Tom Cruise reboot of The Mummy, so the quality of The Invisible Man gave hope that Universal Studios may become synonymous with horror again – or at least that the many classic monsters in the studio’s vaults were in good hands.
Unfortunately, due to terrible timing (The Invisible Man was released right as COVID was closing down theaters), that film never quite got its due as a terrific genre film.
In the four years since then, the USM series released a few tangential films which barely made a ripple in the box office, mostly variations on Dracula. First was the action comedy Renfield (a sort of comedy about the issues of working for Dracula). Then came the extremely dark drama The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which was based on a specific passage of the novel Dracula. And finally, there was Abigail, another action comedy which was loosely derived from the 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter.
Wolf Man is the first direct remake of a classic tale, though. And it was again helmed by Whannell, who had done such a terrific job with The Invisible Man. These are all good signs, right?
Well, to be completely honest, Wolf Man is fairly good, but it’s not nearly as well-made as Invisible Man. It is, quite possibly, the scariest of the USM films – at least in the aspect of sudden jump scares. However, it is not nearly as memorable as the film it is following up.
Part of the problem is a simple one – the story is very compact. Too compact. Not much really happens. There are only three characters throughout much of the runtime (four if you count the werewolf out in the dark, although he does not physically appear on camera until over an hour into the runtime). A great majority of the film is also in one basic setting, a wilderness farmhouse and the woods which surround them.
Wolf Man relies a lot on flashbacks, flash forwards, dream and fantasy sequences to pump up the somewhat sparse narrative. It also adds a somewhat unnecessary – or at least underexplored – subplot on parental neglect and generational trauma.
Interestingly, though, Wolf Man changes a lot of the rules of the werewolf film – or simply ignores them. Things like silver bullets and full moons are not mentioned at all.
The transformation into a wolf does not take on the traditional hairy-face tack. In fact, the change to a wolf here seems to owe a lot more to David Cronenberg’s body horror classic The Fly than it does to any previous werewolf film. The victim slowly starts to come apart (losing teeth, limbs, sprouting boils, etc.), but never really looks lycanthropic.
So, what do we have here? It is the story of a family – dad Blake (Christopher Abbott), mom Charlotte (Julia Garner), and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). We actually meet Blake in a flashback intro in which he (played by Zac Chandler as a child) and his stern dad (Sam Jaeger) are hunting on dad’s land and survive a strange attack of an unseen creature.
Years later, Blake has long since moved to New York. He’s a doting dad, but it’s obvious that his marriage is in a bit of trouble. Charlotte is a journalist who is a perfectionist and puts her job ahead of everything. Therefore Blake has mostly taken responsibility for raising Ginger. And, frankly, he’s a bit overbearing, but obviously loves her.
They are given notice that Blake’s father, who has been missing for quite a while now, has been declared dead. (They never say how long dad has been gone, but I believe it usually takes seven years missing to declare someone dead without any proof.) Blake has inherited the father’s home. They decide to go to check out the house and go through his dad’s belongings.
However, when they are close to the home, their truck is run off the road when they swerve to miss a strange humanoid looking animal in the dark. As they are recovering in the truck (which is stuck on its side in a tree) the animal comes after them. It scratches Blake, but the family is able to run into the house and lock themselves up. They listen as the animal makes wild noises in the night. And then suddenly Blake starts to metamorphose.
So is the real danger outside, or is it in the house? Or both?
This leads to a long series of body horror creepiness, lots of jump scares, and a real sense of dread. However, unlike Invisible Man, this new film has little sense of fun. The characters are mostly sort of shallow and unlikeable, and we’re stuck in the house with them, too. So, while Wolf Man has its share of frights, it’s not really something we ever really connect with.
I’m glad they tried it, and I hope that Whannell gets another chance to bring an old legend to life. But I also hope he does a better job of it than he did this time out.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: January 17, 2025.
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