With The Invisible Man, horror expert Leigh Whannell has already successfully brought an iconic Universal monster back to life. His Wolf Man reinterpretation is all the more disappointing.
A few years ago, Universal was still hell-bent on building a cinematic universe based on the Marvel and Co. model from the movie monsters in its collection. Led by Tom Cruise and the Mummy, the plan was to create interwoven films that brought together the greatest horror legends on screen. But the starting signal failed and led to a complete reset.
In collaboration with horror forge Blumhouse, Universal said goodbye to any franchise ideas and released its monsters for revival. The very first attempt was a success: The Invisible Man by Leigh Whannell turned out to be a contemporary update of the horror classic and got under your skin with every shot. Unfortunately, Wolf Man cannot repeat this feat.
From Ryan Gosling to Christopher Abbott: The Wolf Man is now raging in the present
Originally announced with Ryan Gosling in the lead role, Wolf Man has changed several times in recent years. While it was initially media-fixated films like Nightcrawler and Network that inspired the reboot, we are now dealing with a nightmare in the forests of Oregon. There is no trace of civilization to be found, let alone disturbing news broadcasts.
Watch the Wolf Man trailer here:
Only one thing remains: The new Wolf Man is set in the present and thus moves away from classic interpretations of the material, which draw on old-fashioned backdrops, such as Joe Johnston’s version from 2010. Just as with The Invisible Man, director and co-writer Whannell seeks out the horror in the here and now – in the case of an affluent family from the city who become increasingly alienated from themselves.
When writer Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) inherits his father’s remote house, he wants to make a fresh start. His relationship with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) could hardly be more distant. He often loses his temper with his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). Out of San Francisco and into nature: the change of scenery should create new closeness, but what follows is pure darkness.
In Oregon, the Lovells face horror before they can even unpack their bags. Strictly speaking, they don’t even make it to their late father’s property with their car. The reason for this is a strange creature that suddenly appears in the middle of the road, forcing Blake to perform a breakneck evasive maneuver that ends in a Jurassic Park-style sequence – the car ends up in a tree.
Groaning metal, cracking branches: at any moment, the family could plunge to their deaths, while a monster with a fearsome face approaches in the rearview mirror – the T-Rex, so to speak. From this point on, Wolf Man unfolds as a fight for survival. Whannell uses the following night to tell the story of the decay that follows an initially inconspicuous but ultimately fateful scratch.
Wolf Man could be the perfect counterpart to The Invisible Man, but he is significantly weaker
The tragedy that lies dormant in Wolf Man lends itself as a counterpart to The Invisible Man. Five years ago, Elisabeth Moss had to escape a toxic relationship. Her husband, a reasonable scientist on the surface, turned out to be a psychopath and manipulator who didn’t shy away from gaslighting or violence. Wolf Man, on the other hand, focuses on a fragile image of masculinity.
Blake learned only harshness and discipline from his father. In the film’s prologue, set 30 years in the past, he can be seen marching through the forest as a child, rifle in hand, looking for his dinner. A bleak military regime prevails within the four walls of his home, a regime that haunts him to this day. Blake wants nothing more to do with becoming like his solitary father.
All the more shocking is the realization that after coming into contact with the beast, he no longer has control over himself. The transformation, the centerpiece of every werewolf movie, connects Whannell with a story that is incredibly sad in theory: in an attempt to bring his family back together, Blake loses his ability to communicate and becomes an animalistic danger to those he loves.
The camera repeatedly puts us in his shoes and shows how he completely loses his sense of interpersonal contact. Colors change, words no longer make sense, and every sound, no matter how insignificant, terrorizes him in the form of an unbearable hammering in his head. He is present and absent at the same time. And his urges condemn him to eternal loneliness.
However, Whannell does not succeed in expressing this tragic core in his film. For about 100 minutes, the camera shoozes us from one nondescript, dark place to the next, and – even with the entire iconography of the werewolf myth at its back – does not create a single memorable image. Julia Garner and Christopher Abbott are lost in a meaningless production.
Despite exciting topics, Wolf Man disappoints as a terribly boringly staged horror update
Even the exciting gimmick of presenting the film as a countdown to dawn remains ineffective for long stretches. It just assures that this haphazard back and forth will eventually come to an end, but first we have to endure obligatory jump scares and an awkward treatment of family conflicts. As if the movie didn’t want to come into contact with its own beast.
Transformation and spreading diseases are not an uninteresting topic in post-pandemic times, especially with the diverse possibilities of a genre film, which can consciously exaggerate fears and dangers. But just as the fragility of the (wolf) man remains at the center of the story, Whannell is surprisingly toothless when it comes to the protagonist’s isolation from his family.
Especially after The Invisible Man, which made you want to tiptoe through the cinema for fear of being caught, this haphazardly orchestrated Wolf Man is a huge disappointment. Whannell has thought about how to modernize the material, but he lacks intuition, imagination and, above all, persuasiveness when it comes to implementing it. Has the new Universal Monster era already been exhausted?
