Director Report Card: Leigh Whannell (2025)

4. Wolf Man

After the success of Whannell's "Invisible Man," Universal would announce a whole slate of new films based around their classic monster movies. In the five years since then, only a few of these have made it in front of audiences and none have been especially successful at the box office. One of those proposed projects was a new remake of "The Wolf Man," to be written and directed by the guy who started this new wave of remakes, Leigh Whannell. Scheduling conflicts intervened. Ryan Gosling, of all people, pitched his own idea to Universal and invited along his "Blue Valentine" director, Derek Cianfrance. While a big star like Gosling and an acclaimed filmmaker like Cianfrance surely had an interesting take on the material, this version also fell through. With a new theme park to promote, Universal quickly sought Leigh Whannell back out. I guess his "Wolf Man" was always destined to be the next one. It's the first big horror release of 2025 and, for old monster-heads like myself, a source of major curiosity. 

Blake grew up in the isolated Oregon woods with his survivalist father. While on a hunting trip, the two had a frightening encounter with something inhuman. Thirty years later, Blake is living in the city with his journalist wife, Charlotte, and their precocious daughter, Ginger. He receives a letter informing him that his dad, missing for some time, has been declared dead. Hoping a trip to the country will ease some tension in the marriage, the three head out for Oregon to clean out the property. While driving to the house, Blake swerves off the road to avoid a man-like figure. The family barely escapes being attacked by the creature after fleeing the crash site. Holed up in Blake's childhood home, the three spend the night in fear of what's outside... But what's inside is just as dangerous, as Blake is slowly undergoing a similar transformation, becoming a monster out of legend. 

I suspect that, when tasked to write a new take on "The Wolf Man," Whannell and his co-writer – his wife, Corbett Tuck – searched for a fresh take on the werewolf concept. Most lycanthropy stories go the supernatural route, following in the footsteps of the rules mostly created by Curt Siodmak for the original "Wolf Man." Maybe reality did the inspiring for them though, as the script was supposedly conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whannell presents the idea of the werewolf curse as an infectious disease. It's a bloodborne virus that spreads through cuts and bites, slowly changing the infected's body and neurological state. It's characterized repeatedly as a fever, dispelling most every paranormal association with the werewolf concept. This "Wolf Man" contains no full moons, pentagrams, or blooming wolfsbane. It's as grounded a werewolf movie as you're likely to get, as bold a reinvention of a classic monster as Whannell's "Invisible Man" was.

However, a fear of disease is not what this "Wolf Man" is truly about. Instead, the anxieties that motivate the story are much more personal. The glimpses we get of Blake's childhood shows him frightened of his own father, a strict and paranoid man that clearly kept his son under tight control. Now a parent himself, Blake never wants to be like his dad. He reminds his daughter Ginger, on a daily basis, how much he loves her. When she does something foolish, the way kids are prone to do, he yells at her before immediately apologizing. He wants to be a caring, loving, emotionally understanding and available dad. His rejection of traditional macho tactics are signaled by him allowing his daughter to put make-up on his face or being a stay-at-home dad while his wife is at work. The opening flashback is set in 1995, putting Blake right in the millennial demographic, and he clearly has the common anxieties of that age group: Traumatized by his asshole boomer parent and desperate not to repeat those same mistakes.

In other words, Blake's greatest fear is becoming his dad. The werewolf archetype has often been interpreted as about the duality of man. Whether it is repressed sexual urges or a deeper savage nature, the wolf has always represented the parts of ourselves we are most afraid of showing. Naturally, once he's bitten, this means Blake immediately begins to yell at his wife and kid, causing them to stare in confusion. He's not himself, a twitching and temperamental man who literally can no longer communicate with those dearest to him. By the time he's a hairy, growling beast, his transformation into an abusive parent and husband is complete. The lingering fear that he's just as capable as his dad was of being a beast has come true. 

Which suggest another question: Are we all doomed to become our parents eventually? Being in roughly the same age group as the film's protagonist, it's a neurotic worry I've had too. Have all the flaws of my father that made my childhood difficult been bred into me? Upon returning to the Oregon woods, Blake and family meet a childhood friend of his, who carries a rifle around as an everyday accessory. This concerns city girl Charlotte but Blake reassures her that, in the country, everybody has a gun. The place he comes from is still indebted to older ideas about manly men killing and hunting to protect their own. In other words, this world is still a part of Blake, no matter how hard he's worked to disguise that. Whannell's "Wolf Man" most connects to the Lon Chaney classic and subsequent adaptations with these Daddy Issues themes. Blake is nearly dragged back into the wild by another wolf man whose true identity is no surprise, the need to behave a certain way and do certain things calling to him.

If we are all doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, perhaps it's a somewhat inevitable fate. The first proper shot of the movie is of a wasp being torn apart by a horde of ants. Stefan Duscio's sweeping cinematography draws attention to the natural beauty of the Oregon woods. There are multiple shots of the mountains in the distance, the fogs creeping around the trees and peaks. It's beautiful but, as Blake's dad reminds him early on, it's also dangerous. A key shot shows the moving van winding through the country roads, surrounded by trees on all sides. Compared to their urban apartment, the country home is without comfort, with rotten meat hung up in the freezer and a rickety generator providing fickle electricity. The opening flashback could be a short film in its own regard, father and son pinned down by some sort of cryptozoological threat deep in the woods. That Blake has a daughter, instead of a son, that he ultimately becomes a threat too seems important. Not only does he fear becoming his dad, he fears becoming a wild man, embracing the savagery of the natural world and inflicting it on the women in his life. 

The conflict between men and women represents probably the most underwritten part of the movie. Whannell's "Wolf Man" is ambitious, about disease and parenthood and marriage, meaning one of its themes was always going to be underserved. Charlotte expresses a concern that she can't relate to her daughter anymore, while clearly referencing some growing tension with her husband. Why Charlotte and Blake are having problems is never exactly addressed. Clearly, however, we are meant to believe that they love each other anyway. The characters say as much. Julia Garner, while believable as a mother determined to protect her kid, never sells the idea that she is in love with this man. A key moment involves Charlotte attempting to communicate with a bedridden Blake, who is already undergoing his transformation, recalling many examples of people desperate to talk with loved one's on a ventilator during the pandemic. Blake can't hear her though. The film will periodically give us glimpses into his head. He's seeing and hearing things like a wolf now, with extra-sensitive hearing and smell, seeing fields of light and color invisible to a normal human's eyes. Notably, he can see the veins under the skin of his wife and daughter, the blood his wolf side craves right there. 

This is paired with a heavy dose of body horror, Blake's teeth falling out, his fingernails being torn off and replaced with talons, his jaw cracking into a new location. Like all modern body horror stories, "Wolf Man" owes something to Cronenberg. To learn "The Fly" is one of the films Whannell had his crew watch before filming began is not surprising, as you can see it's a clear influence. (Especially in the climax, which clearly recalls the 1986 remake.) However, "The Fly" works because it's a believable love story. The bond between Blake and Charlotte never seems to come to life. That his transformation happens over the course of an entire night seems to rush the characters' through their emotional arc. That the film will take us inside Blake's head suggests a story split in two. Whannell wanted to make a Cronenbergian story of a man changing into something else. He also wanted to tell the tale of the man's wife and daughter surviving this change. The split in focus damages both elements of the film, the love story and the sense of what is being lost never quite coming across. 

The half of "Wolf Man" that's a tragic story of a marriage falling apart, amid a virus-induced wolf out, doesn't totally succeed. The half that is a siege picture, about a trio trying to keep a werewolf out of the strange house they're locked inside, works a lot better. Something incredibly smart the movie does is quickly establish the settings that most of the story will take place in. There's a deer blind that bookends the film. On the property is a triangular, quietly foreboding farm house, a barn, and a simple green house with vinyl walling. Each of these locations are used in a suspense sequence, with the green house setting up a rather clever way. Limiting most of the movie to so few locations was both a smart budgetary decision. It also allows the audience to be more aware of the limited resources the characters have at their disposal. These are the only places they have to hide and all of them have few defenses for a clawed beast eager to get inside.

The mastery of fright and suspense sequences that Whannell showed off in his previous monster reboot is still on display here. The director has a good eye for when to keep stuff off-screen and when to viscerally thrust it into our face. This is very true of the opening scene, in which we get nothing but brief glimpses of a hairy humanoid and see its breath over the edge of a tree house wall, a rather tense sequence. The scene where the family is locked in the crashed truck, as the creature approaches, builds fantastically, also only giving us small peeks at the monster. A later moment is built around Charlotte desperately trying to start up a truck. It's a drawn out scene, a series of mundane actions, that builds towards an excellently revealed shocked and the first proper look we get at the title monster. From that point on, “Wolf Man” is an in-your-face monster movie, featuring some disturbingly gory gags. Including a bit that plays as both a homage to the 1944 “Wolfman” and Whannell's first horror hit.

Keeping the cast so limited is another example of how economical the film's writing is. There's truly only about five characters in the film, with most of the scenes only being concerned with the central trio of Blake, Charlotte, and Ginger. Christopher Abbott, quickly becoming the go-to leading man for genre projects in need of a neurotic star, projects Blake's anxieties as he succumbs to this sickness. He also has strong chemistry with Matilda Firth as Ginger, an adorable little moppet that you immediately want to see protected. That the script lets Julia Garner down a bit is no fault of her's, as she certainly shows off a strong spirit whenever facing down a werewolf, wielding a rifle, or trying to get an engine to turn over. One imagines, if given a more proactive role like the heroine in Whannell's last monster movie, she would have gotten far more chances to shine. 

I'm already seeing reviews from classic monster movie fans expressing disappointment with this new “Wolf Man,” for being such a radical reinvention of the classic character. When a glimpse at a costume of the new make-up was revealed at one of the Universal theme parks last year, many people were disappointed. Indeed, by taking such a grounded approach to the idea, Whannell has delivered a beast that is far more man than wolf. The make-up is, as far as these things go, fairly low-key. It's the kind of physical transformation that, if not for the speed with which it occurs, would probably be quite plausible. However, within the context of this approach, I believe it works. The subtle shifting of Abbott's face is nicely uncanny, implying a wolf-like state through the shape of the bones under the skins. It might not hurt if you go in expecting something that looks a little more Henry Hull than Lon Chaney Jr. though. 

Having a lot of ideas on its mind at once is not the worst sin a horror movie can commit. Whannell's “Wolf Man” would probably be a better movie if it was only about disease, or parental anxieties, or childhood trauma, or a dissolving marriage, or simply a siege picture about trying to keep a monster out. The film does performs some of these ideas better than others. However, the reboot still has a committed cast in its corner, several impressively tense moments, and some fine cinematography and make-up. If nothing else, it's a new take on a familiar concept. Unlike the last “Wolfman” Universal made, hopelessly scrambled by executive meddling, it's clear that Whannell made exactly the movie he wanted here. This classic monster nerd found this one to have more positive than negative traits. [Grade: B]