Wolf Man

After his father's death, Blake finally returns home to his father's remote cabin deep in the Oregon woods. Bringing his wife Charlotte, and their daughter Ginger, he plans to clean out his father's house. But as they arrive, they are attacked by a strange animal, and Blake is injured. After barricading themselves inside of the house, with the creature prowling outside, Blake begins to act strangely. Slowly, he transforms into something unrecognizable, a wild beast that jeopardizes his wife and daughter.

The Wolf Man was originally announced as part of The Dark Universe, which was a ill-conceived attempt to create an MCU-like shared cinematic universe out of the various Universal Monsters. Initially, The Wolf Man end of The Dark Universe was supposedly going to star The Rock, a prospect I can not even begin to imagine, but kind of wish we had gotten to see it.

Unfortunately, after the legendary failure of The Mummy, the dream was dead. Universal panicked after the first weekend, shuttering everything related to their desperate bid to emulate the MCU's success, dousing it all in gas, striking a match, and quickly walking away, never to speak of the embarassing public failure that was The Dark Universe ever again.

A couple of years later, Leigh Whannell found success with an updated version of The Invisible Man, which was built around some impressive special effects and a metaphor for domestic abuse. As a result, because this is their cycle every couple of decades, Universal's interest in capitalizing off of the rest of the characters in their stable of famous monsters–Count Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Phantom of the Opera, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon–was once again rekindled. But as that cycle always eventually bears out, Universal has zero idea how to go about this.

Which is how we got The Wolf Man.

This is a project that went through multiple hands, multiple scripts, multiple stars, and multiple directors, moving along in starts and fits, and failures to lauch, before Universal finally turned to Leigh Whannell in desperation, praying that lightning would strike twice.

It didn't.

The movie begins with some text:

In early 1995, a hiker went missing in the remote mountains of central Oregon. After several sightings, members of the isolated local community began speculating that the missing man had contracted an animal-borne virus they called “Hills Fever.” The Indigenous People who came before called it something else: Ma’iingan odengwaan, or “the face of the wolf.”

A young boy and his prepper asshole father live alone in a secure cabin way out in an isolated wooded valley in Oregon. One day, while they are out hunting, they are stalked by some kind of strange creature (a werewolf). His dad claims it was a bear, but it didn't seem like a bear, because it clearly wasn't (Because it was a werewolf.) Later that night, while back at home, the boy overhears his dad talking to a fellow local prepper on the ham radio, swearing that he is going to go back out into the woods, to find, and kill the beast.

Thirty years later…

The boy is now a dad in the big city. His name is Blake, and as he spends the day with his daughter, Ginger, we see that he has inherited some of his prepper asshole father’s temper. Also, Blake's marriage to his wife, Charlotte, is struggling, because she works a lot, and also she talks on her cellphone a lot, really loudly, all while she is standing in the center of the room, and then she gets pissy and acts like everyone else is being rude when it's suggested to her that, hey... maybe she could take that loud-ass shit somewhere other than the fucking common room, so that everyone else can live normal human lives while she's on a call without being forced into silence by her dumb work bullshit.

So...

When Blake then receives a letter from the state of Oregon finally declaring his father to be legally dead, they decide to all head out to the remote forest together. There they will deal with Blake's father's estate, and also spend some quality family time together in relaxing Mother Nature. Maybe they'll go hiking, maybe they'll do a little fishing, or maybe they'll make some local arts and crafts together, whatever they do, the whole point is to strengthen the ties that bind. Also maybe Blake and Charlotte can have a little vacation sex too, once the kiddo is in bed. Maybe they'll get a little handsy in the barn. Maybe they'll do some oral in the woods. Or maybe a bit of butt stuff. Who knows? They're on vacation. The point is, they're looking to reignite that spark.

Unfortunately, they run into a werewolf. Literally.

God damn cock-blocker.

Even worse, the werewolf appears to have bitten Blake on the arm, and after that, the rest of the film is a weak metaphor for the cycle of abuse, meets the effects of a terminal disease on loved ones, until it laboriously limps to its obvious conclusion. Also, suprising no one with a brain, the werewolf that attacks them is Blake's dad, acting as an embodiment of the whole perspicuous metaphor.

This is one of those movies where it's clear while watching it that it was assembled in post, with potentially entire other versions of the film, not to mention character arcs and directions ending up on the editing room floor. As a microcosmic example of what I'm talking about...

While watching the film, I could've sworn that the city scenes were supposed to be set in NYC, but then it later turns out that they're supposed to San Francisco. This confusion is partially due to the fact that the whole film was shot in New Zealand, but also, there are times in this film where it was hard to tell if the characters were doing broad New Yorker accents in jest, or if those scenes were actually from takes where they were directed to try out a more broad New York accent, because the characters in that version were going to be from New York City. It only happened once or twice, but it's a good example of how vague and disconnected a lot of the actions and motivations felt through out the film.

Also, personally, if they were going to be doing different versions with different accents, I really wish that they would've gone with Julia Garner's accent from Ozarks, but that's just me.

This is also one of those movies that is so clearly impressed with its metaphor, believing that it speaks so clearly of the human condition. Meanwhile, it's clear from the start that both the wolf man and the cabin itself are both literally Blake's father, and that the entire thing is meant to metaphorically represent the legacy of the cycle of abuse that Blake's father has left for him, and it's just so clumsy. That's bad enough, but then to make it even worse, the film then has Charlotte explain all of this to Ginger, just in case someone in the audience still isn't completely aware of what's going on. And then, after the whole werewolf thing is dealt with, the film plods on for another twenty minutes, all in order to mirror the opening scene as the most obvious callback to an earlier moment in the film, because there is no idea that this film isn't willing to latch onto and then fully beat into the ground.

It's just a bad idea, poorly put together, and somehow executed even worse. And as if this wasn't bad enough... the effects are terrible. In a werewolf movie! The effects are terrible, especially the boring "wolf vision" effect.

Not only does The Wolf Man attempt to tie its half-ass re-imagining of lycanthropy to a very broad-stroke metaphor about the cycle of abuse, as well as the feelings of helpless that can accompany dealing with terminal diseases and the inevitability of death, it also clearly attempts to invoke the feelings of confinement and isolation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and all while also being a commentary on the themes of parenting and marriage. This is a clear attempt to "elevate" horror by Leigh Whannell and his wife Corbett Tuck, who co-wrote this script together, and their failure to do so is clearly rooted in their lack of respect or love for the genre. The main thing you take away from this after watching the film is that they were clearly much more interested in their metaphor than they were in the subject matter. And worst of all, what is the message even supposed to be here? That there is no way to break the cycle of abuse except for death? That there’s no hope of redemption?

Muddled and uninspired, squandering a halfway decent set-up, and lacking both an engaging story or any emotional resonance, over everything else, The Wolf Man is boring. Despite its 103 minute running time, it drags on, belaboring its obvious points with all the subtlety of a car crash. If you're out there going "I don't even remember this film coming out!" Once you've seen, it'll be clear why.

The Wolf Man is bad. It's so bad, I'm pretty sure I'm going to put the director and co-writer team of Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck on my “Do Not Watch” list.