Review: “Wolf Man”

The opening of Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man isn’t supremely tense or novel, but it is, at least, promising. Grady Lovell (Sam Jaeger) is hunting with his young son Blake (Zac Chandler) in the forest surrounding their remote Oregon home. The prologue’s doom-laden text, detailing rumors surrounding a missing hiker in the area and a possible virus linked to the local wildlife— not to mention the decades of baggage that comes with being linked to Universal Studios’ monster canon, harkening back to 1941’s The Wolf Man— makes the pair’s close encounter with what Grady later describes as an animal walking on two legs like a human no surprise. But the filmmaking stirs interest: the camera pans toward negative space, anticipating a jump scare that never comes, and darts around the area through the scope of Grady’s gun, limiting our perception of the surroundings in their entirety, while the rich sound design crafts an image of something fierce entity that remains offscreen. But then the film jumps ahead 30 years, finding Blake (Christopher Abbott) living in San Francisco as an out of work writer with a busy journalist wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner) and a daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth) who he mostly parents independently. When Blake receives a letter out of the blue that his father— who disappeared in those very woods years ago— has been officially declared dead, he packs up the wife and kid and heads back home, ostensibly to reconnect to his past while repairing his current fractured family. But rather than building to a roar, the action that follows peters out with a whimper.

To Whannell’s credit, the seeds of some interesting ideas that put a fresh spin on a well-worn story are at least within grasp; it’s something that he pulled off exquisitely with his 2020 take on The Invisible Man, which situated that fictional monster as the villain in an otherwise grounded tale of partner abuse. Whannell and his wife Corbett Tuck wrote the screenplay for Wolf Man with the isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in mind, and the film— which after the move to Oregon is set over one long night, and largely in one location— does frequently reflect that. Hopefully, it isn’t too much of a spoiler for anyone to say that Blake is scratched by the wolf, and fast starts to become one himself. Themes of generational trauma and parenthood play out across the narrative, but the metaphors are half-baked, specifically the key one of transformation itself. Wolf Man opts for family drama over scares, which wouldn’t be an issue if that drama was compelling. Rather, thanks to the slow pacing, in addition to a plot which feels for a while like it’s stuck moving in a circle, it not only lacks tension and fear, but is, frankly, quite boring.

The technical aspects of the film do it little favors either. Fans of body horror may get a thrill from some things here and there, but the make-up and visual effects are largely uninspired (props to the crew, however, for opting to pull off as much of it as possible practically). The photography is frequently too dark, and lacks a strong sense of place. When the point of view flips to Blake and the visuals and sound reflect his deteriorating mind as he becomes more and more wolf-like— night-vision kicking in, the dialogue of the other characters becoming garbled and virtually indecipherable— it’s more confounding than effective, and yet still makes for some of the most intriguing aspects of the movie. With The Invisible Man, Whannell had another win with an incredibly lead performance from Elisabeth Moss. Maybe it’s the material, maybe it’s just plain miscasting, but even reliable actors like Abbott and in particular Garner seem lost here (a lot of their early dialogue is stilted and uninspired, which likely doesn’t help). Wolf Man largely emanated from the success of The Invisible Man, and Universal’s recognition of the failure of their attempted Dark Universe in favor of standalone tales from filmmakers largely granted free reign. It’s a venture I hope they continue, even as Wolf Man lacks bite.

Wolf Man is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 103 minutes. Rated R.