I think Universal has been down bad for a long time with their Monsters franchises. I came into this new interpretation of Wolf Man very leery. The trailer didn’t ultimately work for me, and sadly, after viewing it, I was left wanting and confused to the point of this new version of the almost 100-year-old story.
So this story starts in 1995 when a young kid lives with his father in the remote parts of Oregon and goes hunting with him. His father is beyond stern and rigid on his son, but he mostly wants to ensure his son is safe. They interact with a mysterious man-like creature stalking them when they hide in a raised structure for hunting deer.
We flash forward thirty years and see this kid is now an adult named Blake (Christopher Abbott), a stay-at-home father with his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). He shows signs of being like his father in his anger outbursts when his daughter doesn’t listen to him when he’s trying to make sure she’s safe, which frightens him. His wife is a workaholic editor, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and he is not in a good place in their marriage. So when Blake receives notice that his father, Grady (Sam Jaeger), has passed away, he talks his wife into taking some time off to reconnect and go live in the wilderness of Oregon when he grew up.
So, let’s pause here for a second and just think about how wild that sounds. Blake instead of going to therapy to deal with his anger issues and marriage problems – Blake wants to go back to the place he grew up and left because of his father’s way of parenting him. He wants to return to the place of trauma with his wife and daughter, where there is no connection to civilization and where he almost got killed by a monster when he was like 12. OKAY Blake. When they get there, things go very wrong. They get into an accident (the best scene and set piece in the whole film) while trying to get to Blake’s childhood home, and Blake gets injured in that accident.
So, for the most part, this film goes a different way from other versions of the story and definitely from the Larry Talbot version of the Wolf Man. Here, Leigh Whannell, the director and co-screenwriter, tries to connect Blake’s change to his personal issues with his father and how he’s becoming his father as he does turn into a wolf man. It’s confusing because it’s never communicated that his father, Grady, while abrasive, makes sense when you’re in a forest with a monster lurking around. Get it together, kid, and keep your head on swivel.
The film also tries to put you Blake’s perspective as he changes with his vision and hearing and how his body changes. The problem is that he seems to be becoming more like a dog than a wolf. I might be set in my ways, but I expect more of a hairy beast guy with claws and ripped clothing howling at the moon. Here, you get none of that, as you just have a sick man trying to protect his family from a monster outside the house while he’s literally turning into a monster. It lacks tension, and there are no genuine frights. It’s too cerebral, with no payoff and a lack of an ending that you could tell would happen by the halfway mark. It’s a good thing the film is just a little over a hundred minutes, or it would’ve made me want to rip my hair out.
Wolf Man was an uninteresting and lacking monster movie and it starts the year off weakly. If you want to see an interesting monster movie, go find where Cuckoo is streaming and watch that banger.
Score: D
