Wolf Man

This review may contain spoilers!

Wolf Man is the latest remake of the 1941 film of the same name. In this iteration, Blake and his family return to his father's homestead after news that Blake's father has legally been declared dead. However, en route, they are attacked by a creature that wounds Blake; and before his family's very eyes...he begins to change.

This movie builds tension well, in those scenes where it wants to build us up to a point of fear it excels. The film opens with a father and son hunting in the woods; the father is volatile and the kid is distracted and likes to run off. But they become hunted by something much more powerful than them. That build as these two have to run for shelter, as the boy cowers in his father's arms and the father raises his gun, hoping, praying that he makes the shot...It doesn't get much better than that. The film is filled with these neat little moments that build to a fine reveal; one of my favourites is the late film reveal of Blake's final form as he stalks through the entirely darkened house. I also point to a strong opening act, it introduces us to the main threat and our leading family pretty well. What I most liked is that we come to understand that Blake and Charlotte are feeling distant from one another, and Charlotte from her daughter. This is a family struggling, which is a great set-up for a horror feature.

Leigh Whannell's Wolf Man has crisp visuals, with beautiful Midwestern forest settings turning into powerful backdrops. The colour palette or descent into darkness within a scene is a sign that the cinematography is one of the film's real strengths. Benjamin Wallfisch is becoming something of a creative legend for the horror film score scene; the way he has several tracks here blend in the inspiration of wolf howls and the stomping of wolves is quite powerful.

The best performance came from Benedict Hardie, who played Derek. This is a pretty classic character performance needed to enhance the environment of the horror. Hardie's job is to present a figure who has been living in werewolf country, a haunted expert who knows it's not quite safe 'in these parts'. I really enjoyed how off-kilter and shell-shocked Hardie played his role, you couldn't really tell if he had been so mentally traumatised by where he lived or was just rattled by new people showing up out of the blue. The character renting with an old friend in Blake (Abbott) is a strange but fascinating dynamic. There's familiarity there but the distance of time and place too. Hardie made a character that you didn't know you were safe with, but who seemed sincere and genuine for the most part. He brought us into the inciting moment for the film nicely and I only wish we could have had more of him.

Leigh Whannell is no stranger to remaking horror/monster movie classics. He made a perfectly fine but not especially memorable take on The Invisible Man back in 2020, and has decided to play even more supernatural here. The issue fast becomes the script we have on offer here is one of the worst I've seen from Whannell, second only to Insidious: Chapter 3. By and large, this film is about a family, a family who is on the rocks at the moment. There's some interesting stuff here like Blake being a Dad who gentle parents but struggles to be assertive, or Charlotte who feels she's a bad Mum because she's so much better at tying herself to her work. Now we know Blake is going to go werewolf, and the hope is his bond with his daughter might be a plot thread that sees things through or that this experience might bring Charlotte closer to her daughter. However the film offers no room for character development or growth, and these character relationships are barely explored again after they are introduced in the first act. There's a plot thread about Blake's relationship with his father, Grady, but it keeps getting forgotten about in the detritus of a poorly paced creature feature. The film tosses out some very jarring body horror without prepping you much for that sort of content. The real meat of the movie, of course, is the werewolves and Blake's transformation. But the transformation happens extremely fast that it's difficult to call the supernatural elements anything but disappointing. The way the creatures look like humans lumbering with prosthetics is a bit embarrassing too, the film struggles to immerse the viewer at every turn. The final conclusion to the film and the werewolf adversaries is a real letdown and won't satisfy audiences that stuck around to the end.

The special effects used throughout this film look cheap. The transformation effects are pretty simplistic in design and result in an ugly and underwhelming werewolf. The 'werewolf vision' effect looked like an expensive Snapchat filter and should have been better considered.

Julia Garner, who played Charlotte, couldn't have shown less emotional range; Garner barely lends herself to a scene and has no chemistry with Abbott or Firth. Christopher Abbott, who played Blake, is a wilting and ineffectual lead for the titular character; Abbott really struggles with dialogue delivery and some of his big lines are delivered laughably. Sam Jaeger, who played Grady, gives a pretty generic angry Dad performance; he said lines like he had memorised them but hadn't found meaning in them. Matilda Firth, who played Ginger, couldn't really escape the limits of her age but showed some potential; Firth was promising but lost her footing in the final act hysterics.

One of the worst casts I've seen for a horror film in a while paired with a script that lacks character. I would give Wolf Man a 4.5/10.