‘Wolf Man’ review: Bad moon (and worse movie) rising

Leigh Whannell tries (and fails) to revive another Universal movie monster with the shockingly bad Wolf Man.

Man, Universal will not let its monsters die. That’s likely caused by the ongoing Hollywood franchise war with studios digging up whatever IP they own and trying to bring it back to life for some Jurassic World or Marvel-level payday. For the Universal monsters from the 1930s and ’40s, it’s been a series of highs and lows. For every swashbuckling Mummy or stripped-down Invisible Man, there’s a middling Dracula Untold or an overstuffed Mummy (with Tom Cruise for some reason). But money talks and since Leigh Whannell’s 2020 remake of The Invisible Man did numbers at the box office, Universal has shifted gears to the Blumhouse formula of low-budget spooks to turn its creatures of the night into cash cows once again. Unfortunately, what works for a stalker thriller somehow doesn’t work for a hairy home invasion thriller.

Whannell returns to the director’s chair with Wolf Man, a cautionary tale about what happens when you forget to add logic (and lighting) to your movie. Said movie follows city folk Blake (Christopher Abbott), wife Charlotte (Julia Garner), and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) driving through the Oregon forest to Blake’s old family farm. When the trio crash with no cell service and few supplies, they find themselves chased by some kind of large violent animal. Trapped in Blake’s dilapidated childhood home, the family tries to survive the night with the encroaching beast and Blake’s worsening condition.

Mistakes in the moonlight.

To be fair, Whannell didn’t get this job just because his last movie made money. The writer/director proved with Upgrade and The Invisible Man that he knew how to adapt pulpy premises with modern techniques. Movement is also key in Whannell’s movies, whether it be fast-paced flowing action in the former or slow-burn tension in the latter. He’s proven to be good at both, which makes the failure of Wolf Man all the more fascinating.

At 103 minutes, the creeping dread Whannell tries to emit feels so routine and uninspired that it makes every second akin to a painful crawl. The typical slow pans into the darkness meant to build to the monster jumping at the audience don’t come with any sense of anticipation, let alone scares. When it’s time for the werewolf face-off, Whannell can’t find a way to bring the smooth, fluid choreography of Upgrade to the fight (or any other action scene). So you have a movie with limp horror setups and any attempts at jolting the audience awake have awkward execution.

Both of those elements are hampered by a total misunderstanding of lighting in nearly every scene. It’s understandable that Whannell would want constant darkness in the woods or less lighting in an old cabin to add to the fear. That said, there should be some form of lighting in a few spaces of the set to give the audience an inkling of what’s going on in front of them. Wolf Man has little to none of it, making most of the movie visually drab and occasionally unwatchable. There are a few glints of creativity in the execution, particularly when it shows how Blake sees and hears others as he’s transforming from man to beast. But otherwise, the technical details feel like the work of an amateur and not of a man who made a movie that grossed over $140 million.

A family affair.

The script from Whannell and Corbett Tuck does no favors for Wolf Man. Blake’s family drama backstory and how he needs to prove himself as a protector feels stock, with lines written in the bluntest possible way. The writers also throw in Blake and Charlotte’s marriage being on the outs, but its peters out by the film’s finale with no impact on the main story. Once the family faces the wolf-infused danger, they make surprisingly stupid decisions while barricading themselves in the cabin (shame they forget about the doggie door that’s just big enough for a werewolf hand to get through). It takes its sweet time getting Blake into his monstrous form, which leaves Charlotte and Ginger’s weak mother-daughter bond to drag the movie to the finish line.

Garner is a fine actor, no doubt, but she looks so lost and uninvested throughout Wolf Man. Whether it’s by Whannell’s direction or the undercooked writing (maybe both), she has nothing to work with that can make an audience care for her plight. She has no chemistry with Abbott and even less Firth. It’s all the more unfortunate that she has to be the “hero” bravely protecting her daughter from the titular terror. As gorgeous as the last shot is with Garner and Firth overlooking the Oregon mountain range, it feels incredibly unearned.

Give credit to Abbott, who tries his hardest to make his understated energy work with the material. It doesn’t quite mesh at first, with his nervous presence making him look like a stranger in his family before he even grows fangs. Surprisingly, he commits more and more to the wolf persona as his transformation progresses. Seeing him viciously gnaw at his arm to get to his werewolf skin is the most unsettling image of the movie (and a neat nod to David Cronenberg’s The Fly). Abbott’s commitment to losing his mind and becoming more animalistic is the only engaging thing about the movie, so much so you wish the movie stayed on his perspective for the entire runtime.

The bottom line.

Wolf Man follows the same conception as Whannell’s The Invisible Man: take a classic monster and put it in a modern context with deeper human themes. And yet, everything that worked in the latter movie fails in the new one. The modern, minimalist setting makes the monster boring instead of enhanced. The patient pacing drains the movie of energy instead of injecting it with tension. The modern human themes feel undercooked instead of timely. Worst of all, the commitment to a straight-faced delivery leaves no room for memorable scares or gory fun. What you have left is a cinematic flatline, a half-baked concept that comes dead on arrival. Woof.

Wolf Man is now playing in theaters everywhere. You can watch the trailer here.

Photos courtesy of Universal Pictures. You can read more reviews by Jon Winkler here.