Lower Your Expectations For ‘Wolf Man’

It’s a full moon. You hear a howl. Werewolves are back, baby! Specifcally, the long-delayed follow-up to writer-director Leigh Whannell’s smash hit reimagining of Universal’s ‘The Invisible Man’ is here. Is ‘Wolf Man’ everything we dreamed it might be when it was first announced in 2020 and was set to star Ryan Gosling? No, not even close. Is it perfectly fine? Yes, sorta. 

I said werewolves are back, and boy are they. The last few years have seen a wide range of features with large lycans at their centers, from silly B-movie fare like ‘Werewolves’ starring the always gruff Frank Grillo, to more high-concept self-examinations like ‘The Wolf of Snow Hollow’ and ‘Nightbitch.’ Even Marvel got in on the trend. But Whannell’s reimagining carried expectations™. The commercial and critical successes of ‘The Invisible Man’ and the possibility of bringing another Universal monster into the modern age of horror had fans salivating from their overly long incisors five years ago. Now? It’s more about seeing what could’ve been, with greatly lowered expectations. 

WOLF MAN ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Leigh Whannell
Written by: Leigh Whannell, Corbett Tuck
Starring: Julia Garner, Christopher Abbott, Leigh Whannell, Sam Jaeger, Matilda Firth
Running time: 103 mins

‘Wolf Man’ chooses a new path for itself rather than retelling Lawrence Talbot’s story. In central Oregon in the mid-‘90s, a man goes missing, sighted only fleetingly by the locals in a state of sickness called “Hills Fever.” The local Native Americans have another name for the affliction: “The Face of the Wolf.” Blake (Christopher Abbott as an adult, Zac Chandler as a young boy) spends his childhood out hunting with his father, who is an overzealous former military type. They have an enounter with the man-beast but Blake’s father lies to Blake about it just being a bear since they never actually come face-to-face with it. Later that night, Blake overhears his dad telling a buddy on their CB radio that they have to hunt this thing down to protect their kids.

Flash forward thirty years, Blake, wanting to be nothing like his father is now a father-of-the-year candidate to Ginger (Matilda Firth), despite a strained marriage with career journalist Charlotte (Julia Garner). When news comes that Blake’s father has passed away, he suggests that the family leave the city to get some fresh air at his old home in Oregon while he settles his late father’s affairs. Once out there, they find that the area is even more cut off than when Blake was a child. While trying to reach Blake’s old house they crash their moving truck avoiding a strange bipedal figure in the road. When they reach safety they find that Blake was bitten. He begins slowly, and I mean slowly, losing his faculties. Charlotte and Ginger must now navigate a creature out in the woods and a growing concern within their shelter with Blake. 

As a creature feature, ‘Wolf Man’ leaves quite a bit to be desired. The body horror is there and the make-up effects are tremendous, but the scares feel few and far between. That’s fine because at its core, the story of the Wolfman is a sad and lonely one. Where the film is at its best is dwelling in the helplessness of watching a loved one slowly devolve and that loved one realizing their humanity is slipping away. Whannell often switches perspectives between what Blake is perceiving with his emerging lycan senses versus what his family is seeing. It works to great effect. Otherwise, there isn’t much unexpected going on here.

As strange as it is to say just five years removed from the initial hype for this release, this film already feels like it’s from a bygone era of horror films laboriously exploring generational trauma. Don’t expect it to crack the Mount Rushmore of canidae films where firmly sit atop ‘An American Werewolf in London,’ ‘Ginger Snaps,’ ‘The Wolf Man’ (1941), and ‘The Howling.’ But despite all its hairy warts and it probably being too little too late to keep the hope alive of a full Universal monsters revival, ‘Wolf Man’ at least somewhat keeps the werewolf dream alive. Awoo!