Wolf Man review – a bit of a howler

Horror buffs and the perennially online will no doubt recall the now-infamous cast photo from 2017 which was supposed to herald the dawn of Universal’s “Dark Universe”. Featuring four of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time (and Sofia Boutella), the cursed image endures as a memento mori of the studio’s ambitious plans to unite its classic monster movies under a single blockbuster umbrella. Following The Mummy’s rude reawakening later that year, the project was hastily shelved, destined never to see the light of day.

Three years later, however, Universal teamed up with Blumhouse – a production company renowned for making mass-appeal, high-concept horror on the cheap – and Australian director Leigh Whannell to revive one of the OG monster squad. Putting a modern twist on HG Wells’ ‘The Invisible Man’ by revealing the real monster to be toxic masculinity, Whannell’s 2020 film of the same name signalled a shift toward a more independent-minded, filmmaker-driven approach. So, can Whannell do for the Wolf Man what he did for his stealthy stablemate?

First off, it’s worth noting that Wolf Man 2025 bears no relation whatsoever to Universal’s last ill-fated attempt at bringing this particular beast back to life on the big screen: 2010’s The Wolfman, which is, by every conceivable measure, a diabolical movie. You know, aside from the obvious fact that it’s also about a man who gets bitten by, and subsequently turns into, a wolf.

This is not your typical gothic werewolf tale, then, but a dour domestic drama in wolf’s clothing. Set primarily in the dense pine forests of the Pacific Northwest, Whannell’s film owes more to John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, Mike Nichols’ Wolf and Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers than anything the great Lon Chaney Jr put his name to. Indeed, there’s more than a hint of Griffin Dunne about Wolf Man star Christopher Abbott here.

He plays Blake, a doting father and passive-aggressive husband who is determined to be a better family man than his own emotionally distant and overbearing dad ever was. To this end, Whannell and co-writer Corbett Tuck, though evidently well-versed in the tropes of this specific horror subgenre, are chiefly concerned with using werewolf lore as a metaphor for becoming the thing you hate most. Frankly, it’s a bit on the nose.

Returning to the scene of his childhood trauma, Blake whisks wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) away from their comfortable life in San Francisco to his father’s isolated farmhouse in rural Oregon, where a local legend tells of a strange and dangerous creature lurking in the woods. But before they even reach the farm, all hell breaks loose. Suddenly, Blake is forced to reckon with the brutal realisation that his promise to Ginger – that he will always keep her safe – may come back to bite him – or, more accurately, her.

The violent ambush that instantly derails the family’s quiet getaway is genuinely nerve-racking – Whannell proving himself adept at crafting an effective, not to mention expensive-looking, set piece – but it’s also the moment when the film’s bite starts to weaken. With the emotional stakes having been spelled out in giant, razor-sharp claw marks, all that’s left to do is squirm at Blake’s slow, agonising change and wait for the inevitable to happen.

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