WOLF MAN: is a Dog

As I left my early evening screening of Leigh Wannell’s Wolf Man this week, I overheard several audience members ask one of the most fundamental questions that can ever arise as the credits roll on a film: “Why did they make this?” And indeed, Wolf Man’s lackadaisical cul-de-sac of promising ideas, wildly disparate tones, and dead air begs this question. So before we dig into this oddly dreamy entry into the low-budget creature feature genre, let’s try to answer it. 

For context, Universal’s original interest in (re)resurrecting this classic horror monster dates back over a decade to 2014, a relic from Universal’s long-since-abandoned “Dark Universe.” This would-be MCU of horror classics was staked in the heart in 2017 after the spectacular failure of The Mummy (a movie probably best known for its trailer, which the studio accidentally released without a proper sound mix providing watchers with the delightful experience of listening to Tom Cruise holler like a banshee on a hot-mic as he plummeted from a helicopter).

Nevertheless, the property popularized by Lon Cheney Jr. in 1941 was tossed around like a hot potato until 2023, when Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance abandoned it due to scheduling conflicts. Soon thereafter Wannell, whose fantastically original domestic abuse thriller, The Invisible Man, was arguably the creative pinnacle of the abandoned “Dark Universe” concept, picked up the pieces and, well, here we are in January, the armpit of the theatrical release calendar. 

“I’m Here to Protect You”

Wolf Man’s tortured development is written all over this movie from the opening shot, a beautiful vista intended to be thematically potent that’s hard to see because it’s smothered by an expository title card that has literally zero bearing on the events of the rest of the film. From there, we’re introduced to a young Blake Lovell (Zac Chandler, eventually Christopher Abbott) and his father, Grady (Sam Jaeger). As his father’s Shining-inspired name might suggest, the two have a strained relationship marred by the distant older man’s penchant for military-style discipline and survivalism. When they’re quickly attacked by what Grady assures his son is “a bear” (but which we clearly and far too soon see is a werewolf), we learn this paranoiac need for control isn’t quite as kooky as it initially appeared. He aims to hunt the werewolf. 

Cut abruptly to 30 years later. Blake, once a dreamy, clearly not-cut-out-to-live-in-the-woods kid, is an unemployed urbanite “writer” with an adorable daughter who he dotes on named Ginger (yes, as in Snaps) (Matilda Firth) and a high-powered journalist wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), whose busy schedule clearly strains their relationship. The dynamic between husband and wife in these early passages, already tinged by overt references to The Shining, are the most potentially interesting elements of the film. Blake is clearly the primary caregiver to their daughter and entreats Charlotte to spend more time with her, making dinner and asking her to take work calls elsewhere while Charlotte delivers weary monologues about her inability to parent as a working woman. If this sounds like the set-up to an ‘80s movie about “getting out of the city” and restoring the nuclear family so men can be men and women can wear aprons (think Fatal Attraction or JD Vance’s Twitter), it feels like that! But only for a second–– as soon as we get out of town we drop Blake’s simmering resentment at his wife (which is presented as ambiguously justified, though this may be a product of weak direction–– he asks her to take her call elsewhere when he’s just discovered that his long-missing father’s been officially declared dead and she cattily tells him to not interrupt, a scene that could play any number of ways but here feels almost catatonically literal). 

The family’s departure for Oregon to take care of Blake’s father’s effects introduces another familiar end-of-the-Carter-era trope only to drop it: Redneck horror. Blake’s impotence in the city is contrasted by the competence of an old hunter friend (Benedict Hardie), whose hunting rifle makes the city girls profoundly uncomfortable in a way that could once again be construed as sexist, if charitably only through directorial drift. But when the wolf man immediately runs them off the road, we drop this too, effectively upending the film’s hitherto thematic core. If city living is presented as a site of fulfillment at the cost of overt emasculation, country life is presented as literally deadly, turning fathers into hyper-macho abusive monsters, making Blake’s predicament into something like the plot of an Ari Aster movie in miniature. 

Conclusion

The remaining 75 minutes of the film, alas, are even less interesting. The plot can be summarized as follows: Blake turns into a werewolf and his family tries to survive until morning. This description, though, would unfortunately be generous. Really, the back half of the film after Blake is infected is a long run of nearly identical scenes in which Charlotte and Ginger stare with horrified sadness and ask him if he’s okay while Blake, who loses his ability to speak in a frustrating jump-cut, gets progressively sicker and stares back at them, forlorn. There’s promise here, of course: The quasi-psychedelic effect that connotes Blake’s wolf-vision is novel and interestingly distancing; likewise, Blake’s physical transformation, paired with his aphasia and his family’s staunch dedication to treating him like nothing’s wrong, could have been more effectively plumbed for pathos–– as was clearly intended here–– with more careful attention to pacing. There are, apparently, no clocks at Grady’s house, meaning there is no sense of urgency or progression as the night wears on. The family sleeps, uses the radio, has heart-to-hearts, and is sporadically attacked with no real feeling that they’re getting any closer to morning. In light of this, the rest of the film, a blend of these scenes and periodic wolf fights is often slow to the point of boredom. The pathos of the family’s loss is smothered by unintentional comedy: Blake takes a big bite out of his own flayed arm and his daughter asks “what’s wrong with him.” Unlike last year’s Night Swim, though, this humor isn’t enough to bring the film into the realm of camp. Ultimately, the best that can be said for Wolf Man is that, like its well-intentioned yet nevertheless obviously doomed protagonist, its heart is in the right place. 

Wolfman will be released in theaters in the US on January 17th, 2025.