Leigh Whannell’s newest film Wolf Man is both a technical achievement and a narrative bore. This pseudo-remake of the well-known lycanthrope legend starts off strong before diving into too many metaphors and realizing none of them. His 2020 film The Invisible Man, felt like a breath of fresh air for the monster movie genre. But Wolf Man unfortunately didn’t learn the correct lessons from his previous film.

Wolf Man is not a bad movie. There are actually parts and aspects of this film that are quite good. But each plot thread is half-heartedly set up with no satisfying conclusion. What begins as an interesting metaphor for parents and hereditary diseases, wraps up with a boring conclusion that is too on the nose to make for great cinema.

The Man Behind The Wolf

Wolf Man begins with a short narrative prologue showing the film’s protagonist, Blake Lovell played by Christopher Abbott, on a hunting trip with his father thirty years before the events of the film. Even in this brief setup, the film shows its hand as to what the major themes of Wolf Man will be. Overprotective parents.

The next scene hits the point even harder as we see Blake with his young daughter Ginger. The two walk hand in hand down a busy San Fransisco street, giant toys and tutus in tow. Blake suffers from the same helicopter parenting as his father. Taking his role as protector a little too seriously. It’s truthfully an interesting metaphor, but when the film is about men turning into wolves, the theme doesn’t land as well. Behind this is the film’s second but true theme. Familial hereditary illness. Each father is trying to protect their children from something greater but in the end, the threat is themself. Again, it’s an interesting idea, it’s just the execution that fails to realize the theme.

Ozark To Oregon

Julia Garner plays Charlotte, Blake’s workaholic wife. Her performance here is actually one of the worst technical aspects of the film, though I don’t know if that is entirely her fault. It feels like most of her direction was to just make a concerned look slightly to the left of the camera. Garner has proven her acting skill but she just simply isn’t given enough to do in Wolf Man. She begins the film as an overstressed wife and mom before quickly turning into a loving mother and doting wife when the script demands it. Her lack of development and meaningful dialogue is par for the course for the rest of the film’s problems.

Garner’s Charlotte is only one of many underdeveloped parts of Wolf Man. The relationship between Blake and his father is painfully thin. And this is made all the worse by a third-act twist the film practically telegraphs to the audience beforehand. Narratively the film suffers greatly. Nothing lands or feels meaningful when we are digging into metaphors of family and hereditary trauma. Wolf Man though is a much better film when we lose the themes and focus on a man becoming a monster.

Technically Sound

After a fantastically shot crash sequence, Blake begins his metamorphosis into the titular Wolf Man. This scene in particular is riveting and ratches up the tension and horror. Whannell and his crew are doing some truly unique things in Wolf Man with lighting, sound production, and perspective changes. When Blake begins to change, the lighting in the scene changes. Everything around him goes dark and he’s left by himself under one spotlight. It looks great on the screen and is a unique way to frame Blake’s separation from his family and old life.

The sound production in particular I found truly remarkable. A scene where Blake begins to hear a spider crawling on the wall and the sound mixing in the crash sequence is some of the best productions I’ve heard in recent years. His change is captured in such a unique way with the color palettes, sound, and surroundings changing around him as the camera’s perspective shifts. It’s the best part of the film and it makes the second act the most compelling part of Wolf Man.

Transforming Wolf Man

Werewolf films, especially those centered on a human changing into one, often utilize copious amounts of body horror to varying degrees of success. Wolf Man also utilizes body horror, but in a way that is much more terrifying and more believable. The prosthetics Abbott wears towards the end aren’t the best, but the moments of sickness leading up to his change are what truly stand out.

It’s just a shame everyone around him is less in awe of this transformation than we the audience are. Julia Garner is given little to say or do in these scenes, and his daughter is similarly underutilized. Rather than create a cohesive plan or panic in terror, they are more or less just dumbfounded by the transformation. It’s hard to judge what a person would actually do in this improbable at best situation, but his family’s reaction is far from believable.

The Man Becomes Wolf

Wolf Man ends in a way that is unsatisfying and underdeveloped. The themes of family trauma, helicopter parenting, and mental illness all come full circle but it doesn’t feel earned. Wolf Man has a lot to say but the film is best when it’s not saying anything.

The best horror movies are the ones that have something meaningful to say. 2024’s sea of great releases proves that. But Wolf Man falls into an odd category where the film would have been better if it didn’t try so hard to be something it isn’t. Monster movies and horror films are better when the themes are subtle and lie beneath the surface. We have the big monsters and the jump scares. Everything else should be subdued. The themes in Wolf Man aren’t subtle enough to hide below the surface and they aren’t realized well enough to make the audience think. In Wolf Man, the man becomes the monster, and that’s the only interesting part.