Director: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Sam Jaeger, Matilda Firth
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 103 mins

Wolf Man is the new film by Leigh Whannell, a modernised reboot of the 1941 original with a relatively modest $25 million budget. Of course, there’s been no shortage of other attempts at remaking the gothic horror Universal monster and although it was negatively received, I loved Joe Johnston’s 2010 Benicio Del Toro-starring effort. Whannell knows a thing or two about making intelligent horror films on a relative budget, being best known for his writing collaborations with director James Wan with films such as Saw and Insidious. He’s also proven an adept director, making Insidious: Chapter 3 (which I consider to be the best sequel in the series), Upgrade and The Invisible Man. 

Like The Invisible Man, Whannell updates the creature feature for modern times. Gone is the quintessential British setting, stately estates and a stage actor. Instead, we follow a young family man, Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) who lives with his workaholic wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). Blake had had a rough childhood in the remote Oregon mountains with his father and decides that that the best way to rekindle his relationship with his wife is to return to his childhood home on holiday. However, a creature drives them off the road as soon as they arrive and… you know the rest. 

Unfortunately, Wolf Man is a complete and utter misfire – a surprise for this otherwise reliable director. The idea of lycanthropy being a metaphor for toxic masculinity and family trauma is very heavy-handedly done and the script, which Whannell co-wrote with Corbett Tuck is a rewrite away from being reasonable. It’s poorly paced –the film would have benefitted from another 15 minutes to flesh out its characters and not just throw them into a new setting almost immediately. Characters make stupid decisions and I didn’t find either Blake or Charlotte to be likeable, despite both Abbott and Garner trying their best. The characters simply aren’t developed enough and the film lack the grand scale of its predecessors in that it largely confines itself to a single location. The lower budget isn’t a problem in itself but Whannell doesn’t do anything interesting with it. 

On the plus side, the film’s lusciously shot by Whannell-regular Stefan Duscio, who captures the isolated and solemn nature of the forest, lending the film a sporadically claustrophobic quality. There’s also a couple of ambitious attempts at body horror but the lack of budget is painfully apparent. I think Wolf Man would have fared better if it had divorced itself from the Universal original and been an original horror – the result feels much closer to It Comes At Night, even if it’s nowhere near as competent. It’s a shame Whannell wasn’t able to crack this one and Wolf Man proves that some stories are best left in the past.