While it’s seemingly fallen into disrepair relatively quickly, or forgotten about at least, Aussie director Leigh Whannell did an exceptional job helping form the sub-genre of modern emotional trauma horror with the terrific “The Invisible Man.” An “elevated” thriller, if you will, the movie was a reimagining of an old Universal monster franchise and reshaped it into an emotionally terrifying nightmare about the way women endure the horrors of patriarchy-driven gaslighting. Whannell returns to a similar well with “Wolf Man,” another Blumhouse horror that attempts to reinvent a Universal monster franchise for modern times, refashioning it as a would-be poignant family drama.
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However, while the film has its heart in the right place—attempting to craft a drama about the ways in which trying to protect our children can backfire, the film ultimately is thinly written, lacks depth and lands as a half-baked effort.
It’s a shame, too, because Christopher Abbott and Julie Garner are terrific actors, and Whannell can be a brilliant filmmaker. However, the film ultimately underwhelms and never comes together in any real meaningful way.
“Sometimes, Daddy’s are so intent on protecting their little kids from scars, they become the scars they mean to save them from,” Abbott’s father character, Blake Lovell, says (paraphrasing) to his daughter, Ginger Lovell (Matilda Firth), early on in the film, spelling out its entire raison d’etre.
And it is a well-meaning idea, especially given the movie’s prologue. In this flashback, a young Blake is being taken on a hunting trip with his father, Grady Lovell (Sam Jaeger). This preface details the origins of the Wolf Man creature, but more importantly, it sets up the emotional baggage embedded in the main character. A hunter and survivalist, Blake’s father is all too well aware of how nature is beautiful but can be cruel and merciless if not respect; Gradydy holds on too tightly in trying to protect his son, in the process becoming an agitated, aggressive, worried father figure that isn’t actually helping or benefiting his son.
Fast forward to the future, and Blake, now a father, is trying his best to break this generational cycle of trauma. He yells at his daughter with concern for monkeying around on the streets of New York, nearly getting hurt in the process, but quickly catches himself and apologizes, repeating the aforementioned quote and trying to explain why daddies sometimes overdo it when trying to keep their kids safe.
Now, anyone who has had children knows this is a real potential hazard and fear, and the anxiety of believing life is dangerous and your child could be hurt at any moment can be very real. And it serves no one with anything good, so “Wolf Man” immediately shows perceptive emotional and psychological texture about the consequences that overbearing parenthood can have.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really do much with it other than play that same one-note all of the time, taking it one step further and manifesting Blake into the thing he’s never wanted to become: a living monster.
In New York, Blake and his wife, Charlotte Lovell (Garner), live in a semi-fractured domesticity—the difficulties of marriage and parenthood in a big city like this are never easy. But when Blake learns that his father has passed, he also finds out his house and land in Oregon have been left to him, so he tries to turn it into a tranquil family trip and escape the bustling city.
And, of course, it’s anything but. In a truck accident on the way to his father’s farm, the Lovell’s encounter the Wolf Man, Blake is bit and eventually starts to succumb to becoming a werewolf. Sick, confused, and discombobulated, Blake struggles to understand what is happening to him. At the same time, his family slowly witnesses the horror of his transformation in horror (which is unhurried and lasts most of the movie).
And though while there’s an element of Blake becoming the monster that was his father and endangering his family—as most of these stories go—the Wolf Man character becomes a reluctant hero, trying to fend off the Wolf Man that bit him and save his family, even as he begins to change beyond human recognition.
And that’s basically the movie in an entire nutshell. Dad wants to protect his family badly, gets bit by Werewolf, threatens to become the monster his own father eventually curdled into, but fights the horrible animal instincts inside himself to save his (underwritten) wife and daughter (not the most incredible kid actor in the whole world tbh).
“Wolf Man” is just never as heart-wrenching as it should be. Imagine watching your husband or father slowly dying or undergoing a horrific metamorphosis and being terrified of what he’s become. Or imagine being a dad and experiencing yourself losing your mind and your identity as a human being and gradually altering into a creature you know has the potential to bring greater harm to your loved ones.
It all sounds very wrenching and brutal on the surface, much like the exact way that “The Invisible Man” was. Still, it’s, unfortunately, just one-dimensional, a little first-draft-y, perhaps rushed and hurried, and never as powerful or emotional as the film obviously hopes to be.
“Wolf Man” initially piques a lot of interest, but it is so featureless eventually, just repeating the same idea and feeling over and over again, that it finally even starts to feel a little hackneyed, a shame given its great start.
Howl at the moon if you want in disappointment, but “Wolf Man” is mostly all bark and no real meaningful bite. [C-]
“Wolf Man” opens in theaters on January 17 via Universal.
