Spider man – half spider, half man. Batman – half bat, half man. Our Editor – half Editor, half cut (‘You’re fired!’ – Ed). And now we have Wolf Man, not a superhero but one of the classic monsters from Universal studios and now the latest attempt to revive the horror classic and helming the project is writer-director Leigh Whannell an extremely reliable set of hands with a keen understanding of horror having given us an excellent rework of The Invisible Man a few years ago.
All seems assured with an excellent and tense scene setter where young boy Blake is taken hunting in the woods with his gruff father and finding themselves menaced by a monster that his father explains away as just a bear. Flash forward many years and Blake (Christopher Abbott) is a jobbing writer now living in New York with his young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) and journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) in a strained marriage. It’s when Blake receives confirmation that his still long missing father can be declared dead that he suggests he and his family go to his father’s farmstead deep in the woods for a clear out.
Their trip is thrown into turmoil when they swerve and crash after a wolf like figure appears suddenly in the middle of the road and then chases them to the farmstead during which Blake gets scratched and his transformation begins with Charlotte & Ginger finding themselves in danger both from outside and within the house with what is effectively a series of set pieces.
Similar to his version of The Invisible Man the subtext of toxic masculinity is here also but far less successfully. Whannell at his best is an excellent genre writer but Wolf Man as it has been for previous attempts to resurrect the classic monster, the last being Benecio Del Toro as The Wolfman back in 2010, struggles.
Ginger and Charlotte roles are thin to the point of transparency whose purpose becomes solely to run away from danger and Christopher Abbott undergoes the gradual prosthetic transformation and like all werewolf films has to contend with the insurmountable transformation scene set by make-up genius Rick Baker in ‘An American Werewolf’ in London’. This is a different incarnation that on occasion as Blake’s physical deterioration continues looks like a feral Jackie Charlton. There are neat flourishes – Blake develops acute hearing and scenes where we see within a single shot how he hears what his wife and daughter are saying work well but the werewolf tropes of moonlight transformations and silver bullets are swerved. Leigh Whannell has given us Saw, Insidious, the under rated Upgrade and the excellent and hugely successful Invisible Man remake but Wolf Man is a rare misfire that moves along swiftly enough for what is ultimately a disposable Saturday Night film.
related feature : ‘The Invisible Man’ – REVIEW
related feature : Nick Frost, Aisling Bea chat about their comedy horror, ‘Get Away’ (SPOILERS alert)
We chat to Leigh Whannell about his werewolf transformation scene in Wolf Man….
Here’s the Wolf Man trailer…….
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