WOLF MAN (2025)
Updated: Feb 7
A Monster Movie that Needs More Bite.
Grade: B
Wolf Man, Leigh Whannell’s update of the classic Universal monster, is one of those disposable horror movies. It’s worth watching if you merely want to be scared for two hours, but not if you want a truly high-quality horror experience like the recent Nosferatu (2024). We go see it, we are frightened, and then we carry on with our normal lives. Whannell proved he was able direct a much better reboot with The Invisible Man, which made a splash in pre-pandemic 2020. He brings the same level of technical artistry to Wolf Man, but not quite the same level of visceral terror. It gets by on the sheer quality of its scares, but its story and understanding of werewolves leaves something to be desired.
The film opens with an alarming shot of a wasp fighting ants on a log, followed by some breathtaking views of the Oregon mountains. A boy and his father go hunting in the woods, where they narrowly avoid getting eaten by a mysterious beast. Fast forward 30 years, when the boy has grown up into Blake (Christopher Abbott), who is married to Charlotte (Julia Garner) and has a daughter named Ginger (Matilda Firth). When he receives word that his father has been officially declared deceased after disappearing in the woods, Blake decides to take his family to his old home so they can repair their strained relationship. On route, they are attacked by another monster and Blake is scratched by it. They take refuge in Blake’s house, but as the night wears on, he starts turning into something terrible. You can probably guess what it is.
Or can you? From a technical point of view, the monsters in Wolf Man aren’t truly even werewolves. Like Joe Dante’s The Howling (1981), Whannell’s film seems to be making up its own rules about werewolves, yet it somehow strays even further away from the classic mythology than that movie. The root cause of the horror in Wolf Man is seemingly viral or bacterial, not supernatural. It is transmissible via scratch, not necessarily by bite, and when the disease takes over, the host remains a wolf all the time. And apparently, the full moon has nothing to do with it at all.
These deviations are distracting, but it wouldn’t matter as much if the story was better. If anything, the identity of the monsters is the one thing we cannot tell with certainty here. Just about everything else is beyond predictable. We can guess that Blake’s father disappeared after becoming a wolf. We can also assume that Blake himself is transforming, and Charlotte will have to kill him to save herself and their daughter. Then there’s the creepy guy (Benedict Hardie) who gets in their car to guide them to their house; we just know he’s a goner, and we are proven right a few minutes later. There is also the oft-recycled trope of the characters wandering around in the dark while we wait for something to happen. It is used effectively here, but it’s done over and over again. At a certain point, we are pretty much just waiting for Blake’s inevitable death; and even when it does finally happen, it seems to be ripping off the ending of David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), right down to the monster wanting its misery to end.
On that note, where the movie succeeds the most is with its makeup effects and cinematography. Blake’s gradual transformation is grotesque and disturbing, as are the attacks by the first werewolf. Both it and Blake retain the classic upright posture of the Wolfman, and they both sport an appropriately horrifying appearance. The cinematography by Stefan Duscio emphasizes an overcast gray by day and faint moonlight at night, creating an atmosphere of dread and suspense throughout the film, and it is all accompanied by a chilling score by Benjamin Wallfisch. These traits all succeed in making Wolf Man a truly scary film, but it is never quite able to become even more than that.
Director: Leigh Whannell
Screenplay: Leigh Whannell, Corbet Tuck
Producer: Jason Blum
Cast: Christopher Abbott (Blake Lovell), Julia Garner (Charlotte Lovell), Matilda Firth (Ginger Lovell), Sam Jaeger (Grady Lovell), Benedict Hardie (Derek Kiel)
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