By ROBERT DANVERS
Starring Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner and Matilda Firth
Directed by Leigh Whannell
Written by Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck
Universal/Blumhouse
Leigh Whannell’s 2020 version of THE INVISIBLE MAN was what so many 21st-century reboots aspire to be but aren’t: a reimagining born of genuine creative vision. Released just a couple of weeks before COVID sent our world into lockdown, the gripping and challenging thriller would have stood tall among that year’s movies even had the release schedule not gotten curtailed. With WOLF MAN, Whannell has taken extra time to carefully craft another directorial effort with Blumhouse backing–and it, too, hails from the Universal Pictures classic-horror canon.
Inspired by 1941’s THE WOLF MAN, Whannell’s latest also registers as a processing of the still-fresh terrors of the height of the COVID pandemic. The movie potently stages several sequences of enforced segregation, and helplessness in the face of graphic illness, amidst a small family unit hunkering down in an ancestral home. The necessitated visit to the latter setting due to a death in the family is a plot thread traceable back to the 1941 film–along with the driving lupine-lycanthropy story strain, which Whannell and co-scripter Corbett Tuck apply with tense brush strokes both visual and auditory.
Following an extended 1995-set prologue serving notice that the filmmaking will eschew hype come-ons, WOLF MAN unfolds in 2025. A preteen (played by Zac Chandler) in the earlier segment, Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) now has a family of his own. Married to journalist Charlotte (Julia Garner, most recently seen starring in another classic-horror variant, APARTMENT 7A), Blake is a writer between gigs and so spends most of his time as devoted dad to 8-year-old Ginger (Matilda Firth) while Mom goes off to the office each day. Their San Francisco-apartment-based life gets a wide-open expansion once Blake’s long-missing father Grady is legally declared deceased. They bundle into a moving van–horror buffs should eye this vehicle’s signage closely–and drive up to rural Oregon to settle the estate. Once they reach the deep, dark forest region, a surprise encounter erupts into danger and terror that will only intensify after the Lovell family property is accessed…
Not so much straying from its cinematic-origin paths as exploring adjacent byways, WOLF MAN delivers shocks with practical gore effects as Arjen Tuiten’s prosthetics braid (or snarl) ideally with Jane O’Kane’s hair and makeup. Considering that wolf men have in recent decades largely been confined to simultaneously overamped and undernourished CG in the UNDERWORLD franchise, the tactile approach here is welcome because it allows for more viscera to manifest. Given its two talented lead actors, the emotional and physical violence enacted between the onscreen couple can’t help but recall THE SHINING and 1986’s THE FLY; the latter’s full-on body horror and aghast-to-pitiable recognition of same come to seem as much an influence here as the ’41 WOLF MAN.
Effectively pared-down though it is (running a trim 103 minutes), WOLF MAN could have benefitted from further streamlining. Key developments and callbacks are telegraphed throughout, and as if trying to mitigate this, the filmmakers hold off on running the title on screen until the end credits. Nonetheless, as was the case five years ago, the movie year is off to a good start in shivery winter with a Universal monster getting a new lease on life thanks to Leigh Whannell and a committed team of performers and artisans.
Great Trailer!