Wolf Man
review by Bobby Blakey

Leigh Whannell exploded onto the scene as the co-star and co-writer of one of my all-time favorite flicks SAW. Since then, he has made a name for himself as a director with some great flicks including Insidious Chapter 3, Upgrade and The Invisible Man. Now he is taking on the classic werewolf story in his latest film Wolf Man starring Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matlida Firth, Sam Jaeger, Ben Prendergast and Benedict Hardie. Could his new vision honor the classic and genre or will it be a transformation not worth witnessing?
Wolf Man follows Blake, a San Francisco husband and father, who inherits his remote childhood home in rural Oregon after his own father vanishes and is presumed dead. With his marriage to his high-powered wife, Charlotte fraying, Blake persuades Charlotte to take a break from the city and visit the property with their young daughter, Ginger. But as the family approaches the farmhouse in the dead of night, they’re attacked by an unseen animal and, in a desperate escape, barricade themselves inside the home as the creature prowls the perimeter. As the night stretches on, however, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable, and Charlotte will be forced to decide whether the terror within their house is more lethal than the danger without.
Let me start out saying that this film has zero to do with the classic film much like his previous film The Invisible Man. It is completely its own thing and is not actually a werewolf movie at all, but fully embraces the title of Wolf Man. There is an opening text narration to set things up that immediately put me in a different place to let the audience know this is something else and allowed me to toss my werewolf expectations out the window and go into this with a fresh perspective.
My love of werewolves and Whannell’s work set a high standard for what I was hoping to get. Removing the werewolf mentality gave me a chance to lower
expectations on those elements, but I was still hoping for something that would deliver the scares, creatures, blood and more and while elements of all those things are here the film is a mixed bag of good and not so good. The story itself is fine and works for what he sets out to do although it’s not much of a surprise with one of the bigger twists. Where it is the strongest is in the second half with the gradual transformation, but getting there was a bit of a struggle.
The opening set up to the film is well done and builds some tension while also letting the audience understand the dynamic of these characters and the trauma that stays with them for the rest of the film. This also sets up the legend of what we are dealing with and gave me a sense of some greatness to come. Then we get to the initial city stuff with the family, and it just drags on. I became concerned due to the seemingly long wasted time to get to the point that is setting up so many elements to this family situation and why they headed out there, but with so many things that weren’t even necessary for the bigger story.
Filled with the boring pacing and not so great dialogue to kick us off had me worried this film would never recover. Thankfully once we get to the house in the wood, things pick up and offer up some interesting things that I enjoyed quite a bit. First of all, the slow transformation makes it feel like a virus and takes us on the journey of Blake as he slowly descends into something else. Whereas we usually just see the physical transformation here we are also getting to see some of the mental and how he is seeing things that are some great moments to make you better understand his change.
The mannerisms of the creatures fully embrace the wolf mentality further helping to buy into the direction away from straight Lycan along with the use of practical effects works great. Sure, I would have loved to see a more full-on wolf change, but it still works well here and offers up something different that is also way better than what you might have seen early on.
In the end the film works for what it sets out to do, but the clunky dialogues, some dumb decision making and lack of anything, but a few jump scares keep it from being the next great creature horror classic. The practical effects, creature execution and final act help to rescue it and entertain for something worth checking out but keep expectations lower than you would usually expect from a horror film or creature feature.
Decide for yourself and check out Wolf Man in theaters now from Universal.