Wolf Man

The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B-

Leigh Whannell, director of 2020’s The Invisible Man, returns bring us another reimagining of a classic monster with Wolf Man. I’m a big fan of Invisible Man (and I’ll always remember it as the last movie I saw in a theater before the covid shutdown), so I was really looking forward to this one. The results, however, are a bit of a mixed bag. While I overall recommend this movie with a few significant caveats, it does not deliver as a modern version of its premise to the level of Invisible Man.

The plot is almost too simple. Blake (played by Christopher Abbott) is in a struggling marriage with his wife (played by Julia Garner) when he learns that his asshole father has been declared dead after having gone missing in the woods. Blake inherits his childhood home from his dad and decides to bring his wife and daughter on vacation to the remote, middle-of-the-woods house for a vacation in an attempt to save his relationship and family. They are attacked by a werewolf on the way to the house and Blake is bitten, leaving them isolated in his childhood home and fending off both the monster outside and the monster that he is turning into.

The biggest issue with Wolf Man is that it just doesn’t deliver as a werewolf movie. That is a bit of a problem when, not only is it obviously billed as a werewolf movie, it is named after perhaps the werewolf movie. This has no resemblance to the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. classic or the significantly less classic 2010 remake with Benicio del Toro. That isn’t inherently a bad thing, as Whannell’s Invisible Man shared none of the plot of the 1933 film. Whannell established a formula there that can work quite well.

The problem is that Wolf Man is a modernization without including any of the classic elements that one reasonably expects from the tile. There is no mention of full moons, silver bullets or any of the other traditional werewolf tropes. The creature design itself is underwhelming and seems more Man than Wolf. The makeup work is well done and it works well enough within the context of the film, but it isn’t anything that will inspire an annual viewing around Halloween. There just isn’t much fun to be had here if you’re looking for a traditional werewolf flick.

Instead of that route, this is more of a cross between The Shining and The Fly and, if you go into it with those expectations, there is a lot to admire here. It is a film about generational trauma, as Blake struggles to control his temper, while living with memories of his own father being abusive, and trying to break the family cycle of abusive men. Much like The Shining, it is also about the fear of one’s husband or father turning against them. It is a nightmare scenario for a wife and child, being stuck in a remote location with a man that they usually view as a source of safety and watching him become a threat. The body horror elements are lifted almost too directly from Cronenberg’s The Fly, as several shots (and a particularly important scene) are lifted entirely from that classic. The scenes are effective, but blur the line a bit between homage and outright ripoff. Regardless, the practical effects are excellent and, while the transformations are underwhelming, there are individual moments that will make one wince.

The performances are all great and make the family threat element feel authentic. I don’t know any of these actors, but their relationships are believable even if the film doesn’t expand on them much. The relationship between the father and daughter is particularly well done; I buy that this guy is struggling and trying to shield his kid from danger. On the downside, the film doesn’t do much to establish the father’s temper or why his marriage is suffering. Based on the odd hairstyle and wardrobe choices, I would assume that the marital issues stem from the wife being an obvious lesbian, but that is just conjecture. The performances and dynamic work, but the script doesn’t lay enough groundwork to have proper setup for the payoff.

Aside from the Fly-inspired moments of body horror, Wolf Man doesn’t deliver much in the werewolf department. The werewolves and transformations are minimalist and the small cast removes any potential for kills. At minimum, there should have at least been a couple of neighbors for the werewolf to maul. Being stuck almost entirely with these three characters removes much of the suspense and limits the potential body count to pretty much zero. Instead of the werewolf itself, the film mainly focuses on the psychological aspects of the drawn-out transformation process and it does some interesting things with it. In particular, several scenes have a perspective shift that shows how the werewolf is viewing things and losing his grip on humanity and reality. There are interesting concepts here with the transformation; they just don’t have an ultimately satisfying payoff for horror seekers.

This movie has bombed and hasn’t gone over particularly well with critics. On one level, I can understand that. It doesn’t deliver on expectations and perhaps should have used a less loaded title. But taken as its own thing, I found Wolf Man to be an interesting subversion of the core concept. It isn’t in the upper echelon of werewolf flicks, but give it a shot if the mix of The Fly and The Shining sounds appealing to you. I saw this with four people; my wife loved it, one friend thought it was okay and two friends hated it, so there are a wide range of possibilities with this one.

Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Man_(2025_film)#/media/File:Wolf_Man_2025_poster.jpg