
Wolf Man is directed by Leigh Whannell director of Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015), Upgrade (2018) and The Invisible Man (2020).
Leigh Whannell is a very talented director who’s last film The Invisible Man (2020) tackled one of the classic universal monster films in a much different direction, it turned out quite incredibly and is even one of my favorite films of the decade so far. So I was very excited to see what he could accomplish with Wolf Man and my only question after watching the film was…what happened here? Everything that made The Invisible Man (2020) so great is just not here at all, not the character writing, not the excellent script that helps build the film’s world and definitely not the quality.
Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner are fine enough here but don’t land great performances, it doesn’t help that the two have very little chemistry with one another. The character writing that movie seems to go for here is about as deep as a puddle, the emotional moments between the two are completely empty and just don’t have a whole lot going on here. If anyone brought emotional moments it was Matilda Firth who may not exactly give a great performance but her bond with Abbott at least had one or two moments that showed some promise.
The best parts of the film is by far the body horror, it’s quite grotesque and fans of the genre will absolutely love those moments. The body horror does as much as it can to really try and build Blake Lovell (played by Christopher Abbott) as a character and paint his suffering with his wife Charlotte (played by Julia Garner) and his daughter Ginger (played by Matilda Firth) watch in horror as they can’t really do anything to save Blake. These moments showed so much promise and some actual heart that captures what made Whannell’s The Invisible Man (2020) so great.
Unfortunately after these moments we are never really given anything like this again, in fact after this the whole Wolf Man concept is incredibly under developed. We get no thematic links, character moments, a battle of control or anything, it’s simply an ugly transformation that could be replaced with any given monster in a completely different monster film. I did not go in expecting masterclass writing about a Wolf Man transformation, but considering this was directed by Whannell and remembering how incredibly well he did with his previous work. You really can’t help but feel disappointed and wanting a lot more than what the film gives you.
The atmosphere combined with the location had moments of thrills and this sense of being completely trapped while a wild beast is stalking and slowly getting to you. But it was nowhere near enough to really shake the whole film, after all the body horror ends the atmosphere becomes incredibly typical for a monster movie and never picks back up. It’s frustrating because the setting is absolutely perfect for a Wolf Man movie but halfway through the film it just gives up on trying to make the location terrifying.
Overall Wolf Man is a huge disappointment, while it’s not a horrible movie. It’s one that had so much potential and a frustrating one, you can see glimpses of a fantastic film here but everything surrounding is by the numbers and completely forgettable. It’s a very bland and often times bad attempt of telling the Wolf Man story.
Wolf Man is playing in theaters.
4/10 D+








