Wolf Man Review

Don't try to make me believe that I killed a man when I know I killed a wolf!

Man turning into a beast has been a great storytelling device for thousands of years. It is a way of displaying man's rage and feral instincts, which come to life in brutal, horrific ways. These stories can often be quite tragic, where the beast is misunderstood and cast aside for its outer beauty and never looks at the beauty inside the man. With all that said, I don't know if I'm being silly or obtuse when I ask for more Wolf in my Wolf Man movie. Leigh Whannell's Wolf Man is not a bad movie but is a movie that is filled with interesting ideas that have landed rather blandly. Its script is bang average, the creature design is rather uninspiring personally, and the emotional weight of the family dynamic just never worked for me. Taking inspiration from David Cronenberg's The Fly is a very cool direction and take on the werewolf genre, but ultimately, the film is not that scary outside maybe two sequences. I just wanted more Wolf.

Wolf Man begins with a young boy, Blake (Zac Chandler), who is taken out hunting in a remote area of Oregon with his super paranoid and overprotective father, Grady (Sam Jaeger). As Blake's father yells at him and tries to explain the world's dangers to him, they are attacked by a mysterious creature and barely survive. We jump thirty years into the future, where Blake (Christopher Abbott) is now an overprotective father living in San Fransico and is in a struggling marriage. His wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) is a workaholic journalist, and Blake's insecurity with his career and temper, like his father, seems to be causing issues in their marriage. To save their marriage, Blake takes his family back to the cabin at the beginning of the movie after his Dad had been declared officially dead after going missing in the mountains seeking that creature presumably. As they return through the woods, they are attacked by a mysterious creature and seek refuge in Blake's father's cabin. The family tries to survive, but Blake slowly turns into a monster after being attacked by the beast.

I don't have much issue with the performances, but more with the script. The script is holding back these great actors quite a bit. The actors are being fed some of the most generic lines and not getting much to work with. There are typical and stereotypical nasty marriage exchanges that you've heard a million times before. The film's major flaw for me, outside the creature design, is that I never bought the marriage between Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner. I never felt much chemistry between them throughout the movie, like they were strangers stuck in this wild predicament. Julia Garner is incredible as a scream queen, as she evades these wolfmen, but she is miscast and way too young to be seen as a mother on screen. Once Christopher Abbott stopped being fed lousy dialogue, I thought his monstrous transformation and how he became more animalistic worked! His physical performance shined here, and you can tell he put a lot of time and effort into it.

The wolf in the room is that I don't care for these half-human, half-wolf designs. They seem like they haven't finished turning into a wolf man yet! They're not hairy enough, almost looking like weird humans/chimpanzee creatures, more weird zombie-like things. I like my werewolves to be big, scary, and imposing. WHERE MY DOGS AT?! The werewolves in this are not very scary and can't even handle a small family. The director and the effects team chose to land on this hybrid wolfman look, but it lacked any juice. That's the movie outside, maybe the opening hunting scene and the scene where Julia Garner tries to start up the truck and escape. There are not too many thrills in the film. It lacks any brooding or eerie atmosphere for the most part and tries to focus more on the emotional family drama I felt nothing with, as I've said before. Outside one sick scene where Abbott starts gnawing at his own infected and disgusting arm like a filthy animal, there is not enough blood or gore in this wolfman tale for my pleasing. Some okay jump scares ain’t cutting it.

Thematically, I think the film is trying to tackle the parental trauma that can be passed down to our children, how we can transform into the worst parts of our parents, and how we must stop that cycle of trauma. That's very cool. I wish it had worked better. Using The Fly as an inspiration for your work is also very cool, but most of the time, I found it boring and was like, where are my scares and wolfman? The Fly is many things, but it's also Cronenberg looking at the horrors and randomness of cancer and how it can just destroy someone. There's a touch of that, as well as how the family reacts to the father's transformation and tries to comfort and help them in a helpless situation, but again, all feels underbaked.

The Wolf Man is painfully average, and that bums me out. Whannell's previous works, Upgrade and The Invisible Man, are fantastic. I am a massive fan of both, so seeing what he's done with this Universal Monster IP is disappointing. I think there could have been something special if we had left this in the oven for a bit more. Still, I believe Wolf Man will go down as a mediocre and forgettable attempt at a story we've been telling for generations and will continue to know until the end of time.

Final Score: 5/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit