I’m still convinced Leigh Whannell has the magic touch. James Wan gets all the credit, but it’s Whannell who wrote the best of the Saw and Insidious films. When he went out on his own, Whannell made one of sneaky great sci-fi movies of recent memory. But it’s his Invisible Man that really showed he could do something special: fuse the classic monster movie with modern movie audiences. Hopefully Wolf Man is just a stumble in Whannell’s ascension to horror legend: give him a bigger better monster like Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and let’s see if he can get back to Invisible Man’s heights. I believe in the body of work.
After a horrifying life in the Oregon mountains, Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) is going through the motions of his life in a big city. His marriage to Charlotte (Julia Garner) is in a rut, but at least his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) gives life to the stay at home writer dad. When the state of Oregon declares Blake’s dad (Sam Jaeger) dead, he takes the family to Oregon to clean up his childhood home. And, well, I think you might guess what he encounters up there.
On paper, I like Whannell’s take on Wolf Man in 2025. In general, he’s using the Universal monsters to represent sins of men. The Invisible Man’s #MeToo message was an inspired update, that breathed new life into that old old story. Wolf Man tries to do the same: in this case, it’s about the cycle of abuse. Whannell takes a swing with how this movie represents it: using supernatural perspective shifting to highlight how the abused men struggle to communicate with the people they love, resulting in a horrifying descent into their base animalistic tendencies. Occassionally, Blake will return to Charlotte and Ginger, but it’s never long, and soon he’s back devolving into his horrible fate. Sounds at least interesting right? Makes sense why Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner signed onto Wolf Man, and the talented duo really do their best to try to will the movie to the level of The Invisible Man.
But this metaphor doesn’t work when it clashes with the general goals of a horror movie. Whannell, Abbott, and Garner are more interested in that middle section, as Blake is evolving into his new form and trapped between two worlds. As fascinating as Whannell’s building of that communication barrier is, we’re all waiting for when the shoe is gonna drop and one of the girls is gonna scream in terror. And with a small cast, this forces Whannell to pick up the pace, and deliver more direct, forced dialogue that hammers home his points, to make sure the audience is on the same page. It’s a rare screenwriting misstep from the talented writer, who could have used 10-15 more minutes setting his characters up instead of overworrying he wasn’t scaring the audience as much as he should. As a result, Wolf Man ends up more as a forgotten, missed opportunity, with a few decent jump scares without solid story foundation to stand upon.
But that’s alright. There’s plenty more Universal monsters, and I would love to see Whannell dig his brilliant mind into a great one like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Can you imagine his version, with all the new mental health diagnoses and maybe alpha vs. beta males? I believe in you Leigh, just shake this one off. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault….