Wolf Man (2025)

 

 

Wolf Man

2025

Director- Leigh Whannell

Cast-Julia Garner, Christopher Abbott, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger

            The movie begins with an anecdote about a sickness in the Pacific northwest that drives people mad, a sickness that the local indigenous people call “the face of the wolf.”

           The story follows the Lovell family, who are having a hard time functioning as a unit. The husband, Blake, gets news that his estranged father, who has been missing for years, has finally been declared dead. Blake talks his wife into joining him, along with their daughter, as he goes to collect his father’s things from his incredibly remote home.

            Things quicky go South when Blake is attacked by a werewolf and the rest of the movie revolves around his wife and daughter having to deal with the unravelling and metamorphosis of their husband/ father over the course of a night.          

            First off, the movie probably shouldn’t have been called Wolf Man since it has nothing in common with its namesake. The 2010 Wolfman was a petty faithful remake of the original with the same setting and essentially the same plot. Frankly, giving this new movie that name just hurts it, as it inevitably draws a comparison to films that it shouldn’t be compared to (maybe they should have just called it Face of the Wolf).

            Being that it’s a Blumhouse film, there have been some horror “gatekeepers” that have been scoring it for months. It does suffer from some of the same problems as many other mainstream horror films, but it does have some things to recommend it.

The Bad- The plot could be summarized as “Generational family trauma and werewolves that represent the generational family trauma.” I don’t why so many modern horror films feel compelled to go down this lane. Maybe it makes Gen Z viewers feel more at home, who knows.

            It also has that terrible new style “realistic” dark lighting where its hard to see anything. Now it’s, not as bad as Aliens vs Predator Requiem (nothing is that bad), but if you’re going to stream the movie at home, you better do it at night with the blinds down.

The Good- A fresh new plot! Most werewolf movies tend to fall into one of two types. Type 1) where the protagonist is a schmuck that gets bit by a werewolf and the movie follows their gradual descent into lycanthropy (The original Wolfman and American Werewolf in London being the best examples). Type 2) where the werewolf is the antagonist with an unknown identify and the protagonist spends the movie trying to discover who is the werewolf (The Howling and Silver Bullet being the best examples).

            This movie is neither. We know who the werewolf is pretty much from the start, but the focus is more on the family’s reaction to it. The film also gives us some interesting POV as we see and hear the world changing gradually in the mind of the unfortunate werewolf-to-be. It also eschews all the tropes of the genre; wolf’s bane and full moons are nowhere to be found.

            It’s a very small-scale movie; a small cast spending most of the film on one set. It also has a (comparatively) small budget for a main stream film.

            Don’t watch it if you’re expecting a timeless werewolf classic.  But if you are a werewolf fan looking for a new take on the genre, it’s worth your time.