Wolf Man (2025) | REVIEW

Directed by Leigh Whannell — Screenplay by Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck.

It’s strange to think back to now, but the final film that I saw in theaters before the world shut down as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was Universal and Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man from Upgrade director Leigh Whannell. Now, almost five years later, Leigh Whannell has taken another Universal Monster under his wings with Wolf Man, as he has taken over a project that was once envisioned as Ryan Gosling vehicle from Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines director Derek Cianfrance,. Instead, Whannell’s leads are Christopher Abbott (Sanctuary) and Julia Garner (Ozark). With an early-to-mid-January release, is Whannell’s second Universal Monster adaptation as good as his first? Well, let’s have a look.

Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man follows the San Francisco-based Lovell family, as they plan to stay at the childhood home of the family’s father Blake (played by Christopher Abbott) for some days. Blake, who has a wonderful relationship with their daughter Ginger (played by Matilda Firth), is hoping to mend his relationship with his wife, Charlotte (played by Julia Garner), while they are at his childhood home in rural Oregon. However, things don’t work out as smoothly as they intended. While searching for the way to the home in the woods late at night, the brief sight of some creature on the road causes Blake to veer off the road in a panic, and, all of a sudden, they find themselves crashed in the woods. As they make it out of the car, Blake is scratched by the mysterious creature, and they frantically run to the abandoned childhood home with the howling creature following them. Now stuck in the house with no cell service and a monster trying to get to them, Blake starts to exhibit signs of an infection that is rapidly changing him into what may very well be the creature trying to get in.

One of the great things about Whannell’s The Invisible Man was how modern and innovative it felt, as it was both a fascinating and exciting update from a character, a thematic, and a visual standpoint. Unfortunately, Wolf Man doesn’t feel quite as novel. The visual trickery is toned down quite a bit, the characters are frustratingly thinly drawn (this is especially damning when it comes to Charlotte, as Garner has barely anything to work with), and the narrative, frankly, feels quite conventional. Arguably, the most modern thing about Whannell’s Wolf Man are the gender and parental roles of the two leads’ characters, with Blake being the stay-at-home father and Charlotte being the breadwinner, so to speak. Though, this aspect of the film is underdeveloped and under-utilized, which is a shame, because given the strong opening prologue (i.e. the parenting style of Blake’s father, in a sequence that also features the film’s best moments of tension), there was definitely something here to work with, including the anxiety or fear of reproducing the parenting style of an overly strict parent.

But despite these issues or superficialities, there is enough good in the film that it would be unfair to call it a bad film — as it isn’t, it’s more a case of the film being relatively competent but instantly forgettable. Wolf Man is, at best, merely ‘okay,’ and, at worst, inadequate. But there are, again, things here that work, including the setup and pay-off of the daddy-daughter ‘mindreader’ bit. Despite being light on scares and lacking in the actual wolf-man action, there are some notable and effective scenes involving Blake’s gradual transformation, including some strong but indistinctive body horror, as well as some quite good scenes where Whannell puts his audience in Blake’s shoes to experience his point of view (e.g. not being able to comprehend his family, seeing things differently, and, perhaps in the film’s most memorable bit, hearing the movements of a spider as clearly and loudly as if someone was walking on the roof).

5.9 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.