Starring: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Sam Jaeger, Matilda Firth
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 103 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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A family at a remote farmhouse is attacked by an unseen animal, but as the night stretches on, the father begins to transform into something unrecognisable.
Australian writer-director Leigh Whannell has had a successful career with horror films. These include the Saw and Insidious franchises, as well as directing the remake of The Invisible Man, which was successful with critics and at the box office. He has now followed up with Wolf Man. But, it is not so much in the tradition of the previous Wolf Man horror films but rather a new development, a 21st-century perspective with reference to Native American traditions.
There is quite a contrast between the impact of The Invisible Man and Wolf Man, the visibility and invisibility. A filmmaker can work more subtle variations on horror and terror when the terrorising character is invisible, able to appear or disappear, those terrified not knowing where the invisible man is, present or absent, suddenly menacing. With the Wolf Man, everything is visible.
The setting is Oregon, forested mountains and valleys, a recluse taking his young son out hunting, trying to prepare him for the sense of menace and the tradition of a strange creature, somehow or other infected, wolflike manifestations, and, according to the Native American traditions named here, ‘the face of the Wolf’.
The action, in fact, takes place 30 years later. The young boy, Blake (Abbott) is now a writer in New York, married with a young daughter, Ginger (Firth) full-time parent, his nervy wife Charlotte (Garner) a journalist. When news comes about the will of his dead father, he suggests they all go to Oregon which will bond them as a family. As we guess, big mistake.
Most of the film takes place overnight. The family arrives with a huge van for removals lost in the forest, encountering a friend from the past, but suddenly confronted by the mysterious presence. The truck crashes, Blake is scratched and bleeding, Charlotte and Ginger terrified.
So, we see the gradual transformation of Blake into a monstrous version of himself, his daughter terrified, Charlotte able to assert some kind of authority to help.
This is a film of horror with the transformation, gradual and ugly, into the Wolf Man. It is also a film of terror for Charlotte and Ginger. And for audiences who appreciate and respond to this kind of horror and who have an enjoyment of menace and terror, this is what Wolf Man sets out to offer.
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