‘Wolf Man’ Is a Family Drama Awkwardly Wearing the Skin of a Creature Feature
Leigh Whannell’s new take on the classic Universal monster is more unsettling in concept than execution.
Two disturbing concepts underpin Leigh Whannell’s new horror film, Wolf Man. The first is the fear that you will repeat the mistakes of your parents and traumatize your child in a way similar to the way you were traumatized. The second fear is you will contract some illness or ailment that renders you unrecognizable to your family. These are both valid, thoughtful fears that would, at least on paper, seem to translate well to a story about a father who contracts lycanthropy. Unfortunately, it’s one thing to know the film’s subtext (especially since Whannell is never particularly subtle about it), and it’s another to see it awkwardly inhabit a parable that never delves deeper than its initial fears. It’s a movie with a brilliant starting point and unsure how to resolve the tension.
Blake Lovett grew up in the Oregon wilderness with a strict survivalist father who sought to impart militaristic values to his son. As an adult (Christopher Abbott), Blake wants to be a different kind of father to his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) even though their home life isn’t ideal as he’s unemployed and there’s growing friction with his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner). When Blake receives word of his father’s passing, he decides that a trip over the summer to his childhood home would be a way for the family to reconnect. Unfortunately, the journey is quickly derailed when a humanoid animal creature attacks them and claws Blake’s arm. As the family hunkers down at Blake’s childhood home, a sickness begins to take hold of him and transform the father and husband into, well… you know the title of the movie.
Despite the great set-up and impressive skill at creating tension (at times it feels like Whannell isn’t pulling so much from werewolf movies but from Jurassic Park), the director and co-writer backs himself into a corner by making Blake our main character. The film is at its strongest when we’re wrapped up in Blake’s fears and anxieties. Abbott knows how to walk the line of a man who’s afraid that the darkness he saw in his father may have been passed down to him, and who’s scared he’ll end up scarring Ginger in the same way. Abbott also excels at conveying the pain and grief when the sickness starts to take over and Blake loses his voice, so he has to inhabit the middle ground of striving to be a protector while he knows he’s losing his grip on what made him human.
But the train runs out of track. When the film hits the third act, there’s nothing more that can be done with Blake’s fears, and now we’re adrift in a standard creature feature. You can watch Ginger and Charlotte get chased around by a wolf man all day, but the emotional stakes are now gone. There’s little chance Whannell will kill the mother and daughter if only because there aren’t any other characters in the movie to pick up the narrative. More importantly, the loss of mother and daughter isn’t the fear that hangs over the movie. The fear is becoming an unrecognizable monster, and the film isn’t subtle about how this fear hangs over Blake from setting most of the action in his father’s house to wearing a USMC shirt emphasizing his military-style upbringing. The problem isn’t what happens if Blake’s fears become reality; the problem is there’s nowhere else to go once you reach that point in the story.
That’s a shame because there’s so much potential here, and Whannell’s approaching his story thoughtfully and in a way that’s unique to the “Wolf Man” character. The director took on a Universal Monster five years ago with The Invisible Man and made a powerful film about the horror of domestic abuse. But oddly, the fact that The Invisible Man has no features gave Whannell far more license to build tension and emphasize the “no one believes you” fears in his subtext. Here, there’s no way around having a wolf man, and no matter how much body horror he piles on, that only ends up working against the human stakes established at the outset.
The problems of the transformation are only compounded by how underwritten Charlotte is as a character, and while Garner does her best with what little is on the page, when she takes center stage, there’s not much to go on. We know she’s a journalist who feels estranged from Blake and a little jealous of his strong bond with Ginger. That’s it! What the story means for Charlotte beyond protecting Ginger is never established, and while the film may see it as a proper arc that Charlotte realizes she can be more of an active parent in Ginger’s life, the movie never makes us believe she was particularly distant or aloof. All the pathos rests on Blake, and while that’s a typical feature of a werewolf story, the film becomes a black hole at the end because there’s nowhere to place the emotional weight.
Wolf Man is a frustrating film because it feels like it should make sense as a modern horror film based on Whannell’s clear vision for this adaptation. It has strong actors, good direction, and taps into genuine fears. But it’s one thing to know something’s scary and another to feel the fear. Ironically, Wolf Man has a straightforwardly intellectual understanding of the story’s horrors, but as the narrative drags on, it fails to get the blood pumping.
Matt Goldberg is a film critic living in Atlanta. If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out his newsletter Commentary Track.
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I totally agree. The film misses something on it's way, even if its also good things here...