WOLF MAN (2025)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed by Leigh Whannell.
Written by Leigh Whannell, Corbett Tuck.
Check out the trailer here!!

Leigh Whannell follows up his hit reinterpretation of THE INVISIBLE MAN with another Universal Monster, WOLF MAN and the metaphor this time and the interpretation of the monster itself is…murky. The many forms of masculinity are the clay Whannell plays with in this one. The opening, I guess, is supposed to show an abusive father as young Blake is awoken at the crack of dawn and taken out hunting by his pop (played by Sam Jaeger). While this might be taken as abusive by sensitive types, it really simply played as a stern and strict father who has lost much and is protective of son rather than any type of abuse. If having a father who demands to be listened to and reprimands his son for putting himself in danger is abusive, I grew up like Precious, I guess.

Cut to thirty years later and Blake is grown up and played by Christopher Abbott. He is a stay-at-home dad who is manipulated by his daughter who seems to be a kid sometimes and fails listen to him. Immediately, we are given a similar scenario where the daughter Ginger (played by Matilda Firth) puts herself in danger and Blake yells at her. Blake then immediately balks and thinks aloud that he told himself that he wasn’t going to be like his father with the girl. Cut to home, where his wife Charlotte (played by Julia Garner) comes home from work and doesn’t listen to Blake when he asks her to take the business call in the other room. Charlotte argues with him and the daughter says, “When I grow up, I’m not going to fight in front of my children.” These opening 20 minutes set the stage for the metaphors that are delved into for the rest of the movie.

Blake is the modern man, staying home while his wife works, a concept that was alien only one generation ago. Which is fine if the movie then went to comment on a safe way to somehow get some of Blake’s guts back by the end. But that would go against the horror trope of the woman becoming strong enough to face the challenge and conquer it herself. So immediately, you get the dueling themes of a man trying to navigate a way to be a man in this modern world compared to standards of the last generation. That concept of “what is a male” is currently ethereal in today’s world and is a fascinating concept delved into by dramas of the 90’s like FIGHT CLUB, IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, and a few other ground breaking comedies of the 80’s like MR. MOM and TOOTSIE. Those films dealt with the restructuring of the family and the outcome of that restructuring on what it means to be male. It was smart stuff that really seemed like some filmmakers were trying to come up with a way to explain it all. In WOLF MAN, this concept runs parallel with the template of pretty much all horror movies where the weak endure and eventually conquer evil. And it all proves to be too much for Whannell to handle.

After Blake is scratched by a creature in the woods, he becomes infected with a virus passed from animal to man, known as Face of the Wolf by the locals. This triggers the story to go down the path of illustrating the escalating cycle of “abuse” which was recently dealt with ham-fistedly in Kit Harrington’s werewolf misfire THE BEAST WITHIN. Blake vows to not be like his father, but we never really see any solid abuse, just a paranoid and excitable man struggling to look out for his son on his own. Yes, this can be a form of abuse, but because Blake’s metamorphosis into a monster is physical and the threat to his daughter is doubly so, the similarities just don’t match up, especially after that first scene where he curbs his temper when it was appropriate to raise his voice to his daughter.

But the real murky waters come from later in the film as Blake goes full wolf. Yes, there are moments when he is fighting for his family and one might say this was a way for Blake to reclaim his role as quote unquote man of the house, but later, of course, in full on animal state, Charlotte has to take on Blake, and the evil that is a male influence is vanquished for good. Charlotte already was wearing the pant suit in the family, so this really isn’t any kind of metamorphosis to her character. She’s not the central character and stays stagnant and strong throughout the film Why introduce the conflict with Blake between what he was raised versus what he has learned in modern society, if that concept is tossed by the wayside by the climax of the movie and instead, Charlotte is given the opportunity to quote unquote man up and be the protector of her family, which is something we have come to expect in horror movies. Because the theme of the film conflicts with the horror template, WOLF MAN turned out to be a thematic swamp.

Also messy is the werewolf itself. I get it. Most of the creative transformations have been used up, and that was just as true way back in in the eighties with iconic transformations in films like AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, THE HOWLING, and COMPANY OF WOLVES. Still there should have either been some monumentally fresh design or I’d even take a callback to the original Lon Cheney Jr. transformation of old with a few modern tweaks. We get neither here. Instead, we get a rather sloppy design more reminiscent of Cronenberg’s THE FLY pulpy transformation than anything else. Nails peel off. Teeth fall out. Blake gets puffy. And though he gets a bit hairier, he is practically bald by the final transformation. Yup, you heard me right. A hairless werewolf. Worse yet, the other monster who bit Blake has, I guess, been one for quite some time, so one might think a harrier and more animal-like look would be used. But nope. This monster is just as puffy and shapeless as Blake who just transformed. Both look sickly, off putting, and lack that iconic feel a Universal Monster should look like. The invisible man reimagining in his inviso-suit was a solid design. But no such effort was put into the monster here.

WOLF MAN is not a total mess. I did appreciate the attempt to steer the monster’s origin away from the Gypsy curse and make it more of a virus passed from animal to man. It makes this hairy creature more akin to Bigfoot and the Dogman or the stories of wild feral people of the Appalachian lands. This modern twist of the disease passed on from one person to the next goes with the theme of abuse being passed from one generation to the next. Being a lover of cryptid lore, I appreciated this modern move away from the legend.

Still as a huge fan of the original Universal Wolf Man, I do miss the curse, the pentagram, and the creepy gypsies. I know why they moved away from that origin, but still, the quote “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and Autumn moon is bright.” could have been squeezed in there somewhere. I would have even appreciated it being used ironically, but no dice. While a hint of some kind of local lore is detailed in the opening scrawl of the film, we never really see any of that culture as all of the action takes place pretty much one location (Blake’s father’s house) and in one single night.

Initially, when everyone was buzzing about THE INVISIBLE MAN, Ryan Gosling was attached to this film as the lead. Christopher Abbott, sadly, is no Ryan Gosling. Abbott does fine with the muddled script that he has. He plays the under-appreciated homemaker dad decently, but his performance is no real standout. Neither is Julia Garner as Charlotte. Blake and Charlotte have zero chemistry. And while I feel the script doesn’t really do the actors any favors to give them a scene to connect, it really is hard to see Garner with anyone. She has this asexual nature to pretty much all of her performances. It’s not the actress’ fault. Not all actresses can be Scarlet Johansson. But as a concerned wife, a protective mother, and simply as someone who is watching her husband falling apart in front of her, Garner left me unconvinced.

WOLF MAN is not as bad as it is just kind of there. There is too much of an attempt to make this a socially relevant movie and that not only muddies the story it’s trying to tell. There are clear signs that WOLF MAN was put through the production wringer. Details such as poisonous mushrooms are introduced at the beginning. I thought for sure those would somehow come into play later in the movie and maybe it did in one incarnation, but the mushrooms never show up again. There might have been a tighter script that really went with the dissection of modern man’s role and how that works in a modern society, but I’m sure there was pressure to move back on that concept and simply tell a monster movie. Being a fan of werewolf movies, I was hoping Whannell would deliver something new to the genre. But in the end, WOLF MAN felt more like a backwoods version of THE FLY. Sorry, I just can’t recommend this one.

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