Wolf Man Movie Review: The new perspective of an already known story, the tradition that is readapted and refreshed, the body, the metamorphosis, the horror genre that tells the story of the split between danger and protection; Wolf Man is the fourth feature film directed by Leigh Whannell, a director who, in his palmares, boasts the creation of the Insidious sagas and, above all, Saw (of which he is also the protagonist in the first chapter), together with his friend and colleague James Wan. More than 4 years after the previous The Invisible Man, starring Elisabeth Moss, the Australian filmmaker born in 1977 directs a project that draws from tradition, reworking it in his own way.
The work is a reboot of the 1941 film The Wolf Man - directed by George Waggner and starring Lon Chaney Jr. - and the subsequent remake Wolfman by Joe Johnston, starring Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt. Produced by Blumhouse Productions, Motel Movies, Universal Pictures and Waypoint Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures, Whannell's film instead stars Christopher Abbott (Catch-22, Poor Creatures!) and Julia Garner (Ozark, The Royal Hotel), in the company of the very young Matilda Firth (Coma, Subservience).
Wolf Man: Blake's Mutation
Oregon, 1995; the background introduces a young Blake (Zac Chandler, who will then be Christopher Abbott as an adult) who, in the company of his stern and overprotective father, lives in isolation in the beautiful woodlands of Oregon. The parent tries to educate his son to discipline and above all to pay attention to the dangers that, in the forest, seem to loom threateningly; in fact, in the first sequences, the two come across a sinister and mysterious figure that Blake's father appears to be terrified of, but before the creature is revealed, a time jump brings us to the present, to contemporaneity. In 2025, in San Francisco, Blake is a writer totally dedicated to his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), while his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner), a tireless and industrious journalist, cannot devote herself to the family as much as she would like.
When his distant and almost forgotten father mysteriously disappears, the man suggests that the family move to his childhood home for the holidays, but it is here that the three will experience the longest night of their lives. Once they arrive in Oregon, Ginger, Charlotte and Blake come across, first, a childhood friend of his, and then, the terrifying werewolf that the family, after a serious accident, finds itself forced to fight. However, holed up at home, the protagonists are forced to deal with the particular health conditions of the man of the house, who begins a slow metamorphosis that will accompany the rest of the narrative.
The originality of the re-release
“I hope you go and say, ‘Oh wow, I’ve never seen a werewolf movie like this before’, when the lights come on”. This was how director Leigh Whannell expressed himself in an attempt to explain how much his Wolf Man wanted to stand out from the previous ones. As anticipated, it is a reboot, that is, a remake that, unlike the remake, wants to start from scratch by reinventing the initial concept; and here the director from Melbourne brings to the most famous cinematic tale dedicated to the figure of the werewolf new life, new aesthetics, new attention, brings freshness and originality, developing the narrative over a single night that becomes the scene of the gradual, wise and careful mutation that sees the protagonist slowly transform into his own antagonist, in an involutive evolution towards his own nemesis; the protector is transfigured into a source of danger, as he prophesied, in a film that analyses the parental relationship and the comparison between guardianship and protection on the one hand, and risk and threat on the other.
Wolf Man: evaluation and conclusion
This breath of fresh air therefore justifies the price of the ticket for a work that, although it will certainly not overturn the hierarchical cinephile rankings, which are crazy between the end of the year and the beginning of the awards season in theaters and cultural centers dedicated to the seventh art, still finds its space within the genre and its subgenres. Wolf Man by Leigh Whannell continues the long streak of genre films linked to horror, which in the last two years seem to proliferate, inserting themselves within subcategories such as supernatural dark fantasy, like the very recent Nosferatu by Robert Eggers, and the repellent body horror, recently back on the lips of most thanks to The Substance.
The idea of focusing the story, almost entirely, on the transformation of the protagonist into a werewolf is both a merit and a risk, since on the one hand it is configured as a successful operation both for its originality and because it is accompanied by a decent technical department and good direction (the subjective shots given to the animal are a wonderful and unexpected eye-catching sight), but, on the other hand, as an operation that removes structural, narrative, emotional weight, that lowers the tone of a plot with dramatically consistent and complex potential, and brings it to a lower, less pretentious level.
Interesting, in terms of writing, the thematic comparison between parental protection and the anxiety of danger but it could also have been given more depth, more structure, making greater use of the interpretative value of two protagonists who, too, seem slightly restrained, not at full capacity. Wolf Man is a film that does not overwhelm the viewer but, if seen with curious and not too-arrogant eyes, can give new perspectives and open up to themes that are not at all obvious.
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