‘Wolf Man’ Review: Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner in a Horror Redo That Satisfies but Never Soars
If you found Joe Johnston’s failed 2010 vehicle for Benicio del Toro, The Wolfman, bogged down by Gothic melodrama, fussy folklore and CGI excess, then the comparatively bare-bones storytelling of Universal’s latest return to the monster movie hall of fame, Wolf Man, might be more to your taste. This isn’t a reimagining on the level of Leigh Whannell’s previous foray into the classic horror vaults, The Invisible Man. But there’s no shortage of intensity or gore, not to mention brisk efficiency in the way the script isolates a fragile family unit before plunging them into lycanthropic mayhem.
The confinement of all but a few scenes to the single setting of an old farmhouse and barn nestled in the remote Oregon woodlands gives Wolf Man the claustrophobic feel of a COVID-hangover movie. Which is both a strength and a limitation. But Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner do a fine job ratcheting up the fear factor as their characters’ strained marriage is tested by an escalating bout of bloodletting and flesh-chomping.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Written by Whannell with his wife, actress Corbett Tuck, this contemporary retelling dispenses with most of the usual staples associated with the lupine legend since the original 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. screen version penned by genre-meister Curt Siodmak — no full moon, no silver bullet, no fortune-tellers and no wolfsbane in bloom. The closest it comes to a mythic dimension is some opening text revealing that a hiker went missing in Central Oregon and was believed to have contracted an animal virus known to the local Indigenous people as “face of the wolf.”
Whannell and Tuck tighten the focus on family tensions by removing most of the narrative externals, homing in on a seemingly mismatched couple’s fragile relationship as husband Blake (Abbott) undergoes alarming changes and his wife Charlotte (Garner) is forced to make split-second decisions to protect herself and their young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). Setting the primary action over the course of a single harrowing, misty night was a smart choice.
The actors keep us invested in their fates for the duration, even if the script is psychologically a little thin. There’s nothing to match the nerve-rattling foundation of domestic abuse that made The Invisible Man remake so chilling. Even so, it’s gripping enough — a mid- rather than top-tier Blumhouse entry, bolstered by regular Whannell DP Stefan Duscio’s whirling camera and disorienting angles, by a juddering soundscape of elemental menace and a bowel-churning orchestral score by Benjamin Wallfisch, which is its own kind of savage beast. It also helps that the emphasis is on practical effects, not CG.
Blake’s inner demons are planted in a prologue during which we meet him as a preteen boy (Zac Chandler). He’s hauled out of bed to go hunting with his hard-ass, militaristic father Grady (Sam Jaeger), whose bellowing about trying to keep his son safe is almost as frightening as the growling beast that appears to be stalking them. They scramble up a tree into a rickety-looking deer blind to hide, but the still-unseen creature gets nightmarishly close, leaving behind a massive claw mark gouged into the structure’s door.
Thirty years later, Blake is a writer “between jobs,” married to Charlotte and living in San Francisco, where she has become increasingly focused on her career as a journalist. That means Blake spends far more time with precocious Ginger than her mother, making Charlotte feel like the outsider.
When Blake receives legal confirmation from Oregon state officials that the long-missing and even longer-estranged father he grew up fearing is dead, he suggests that Charlotte and Ginger travel there with him while he packs up the family farmhouse. Charlotte is hesitant, but Blake reasons that the breathtaking view from the valley near where he grew up will help heal their frayed relationship.
Driving in the dark after getting lost, Blake is startled by the sudden appearance of a figure standing upright in the headlight beams, causing him to veer off the road and crash the rented moving truck. Panicked by the sounds of a savage predator and by evidence of the carnage it can wreak, the three of them run for the house, barely making it through the door as the creature closes in on them. Whannell again limits our view of it to a fast-moving blur in the background.
Charlotte and Ginger are understandably petrified, but their fear turns to anxiety when they discover a deep gash in Blake’s arm. He soon begins showing signs of some kind of feverish illness, visible in his eyes and skin and teeth, but also in his heightened senses. In one nail-biting sequence, what sounds to him like the thudding paws of a large animal scrambling over the roof turns out to be something much harder to imagine.
With no phone service to contact the outside world, the family is stuck there, sheltering from the predator outside as Blake’s gnarly physical transformation progresses right in front of them. Gradually, he loses the ability to speak, no longer able to communicate with or understand his wife and daughter. When he starts biting great chunks out of his own wounded arm, they really get scared.
Playing a damaged man, Abbott excels at brooding intensity but also at the softer side of someone emotionally scarred by an awful childhood. He throws himself with agonized physicality and mental suffering into the half-man, half-beast spiral as Blake — continually adding new layers of prosthetics — struggles to reconcile the urge for blood with lingering feelings in his addled mind for his family.
The one cheesy element is something the filmmakers call “wolf vision,” allowing us to see Charlotte and Ginger through Blake’s eyes as unfamiliar figures outlined in a luminescent haze. The effect looks cheap, making you wonder if the burgeoning werewolf has had its retinas seared by too much glitchy video.
Even with some missteps and underwhelming dialogue, tension remains mostly high, especially once Blake’s protective instincts resurface long enough to help them fend off the original threat — involving a surprise revelation that many will see coming. Only when that conflict gets close does Whannell give us a good look at the creature in one of several amped-up jump scares.
Garner’s character initially seems underwritten, but she becomes more compelling once quick-thinking, resourceful Charlotte is forced to fight, and there are affecting suggestions of her rediscovering her love for her husband just as he’s slipping out of her reach. Firth does a good job in a standard child-in-peril role, and she’s touching as Ginger struggles with the conviction that the dad she adores is still in there somewhere.
Whannell has cited pre-CG 1980s horror as influences, namely David Cronenberg’s The Fly and John Carpenter’s The Thing, discernible in shape-shifting scenes as Blake’s bones crunch and contort and his skeleton changes.
Anyone who goes back long enough to remember the eye-opening thrills at the time of the visceral transformations in Joe Dante’s The Howling or John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London — Rob Bottin and Rick Baker really were groundbreaking effects wizards back in 1981 — might judge the latest iteration to be low on fresh juice. (It can’t just be me who finds terrorized nuclear families a tad bland.)
But there’s nonetheless something inherently satisfying about the classic monster tales and Whannell has enough of a handle on primal fears to keep Wolf Man entertaining. Besides, if you’ve ever doubted that an animal really could chew off its own limb to escape a trap, you’ll wonder no more.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
Sign up for THR's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
