Movie Breakdown: Wolf Man
Pre-Screening Stance:
Leigh Wannell is a quality filmmaker – Upgrade is a solid action thriller and The Invisible Man is a psychological horror gem. This, along with a pretty good trailer, has me feeling confident in his take on Wolf Man.
Post-Screening Ramble:
I didn’t hate Wolf Man, but it is unfortunately very one note from start to finish. The film’s story is centered around Blake (Christopher Abbott), his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner), and their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), a family that’s straddling the line between happy and unhappy. In an effort to shake things up, the trio head off to Blake’s remote childhood home to both get away together and to pack up his deceased father’s belongings. Naturally, the trip immediately goes sideways when Blake gets scratched by a … WOLF MAN.
Writer/director Leigh Wannell pulls together a basic mix suspense, drama, and action here, but he doesn’t ever manage to ramp any of it up to a level that’s interesting or engaging. I was surprised at how much of this film is just Julia Garner sort of standing there with a mostly-blank-but-lightly-scared look on her face as Christoper Abbott slowly finds himself getting wolf-ier. And yes, I do mean wolf-ier because his basic more-man-than-wolf transformation, like the rest of the film, feels stilted and flat and it isn’t really deserving of an actual “werewolf” tag. This isn’t to say that I think Wannell needed to go full Silver Bullet or American Werewolf In London here, but something scary would have at least been nice. But then that’s just this entire film – it’s certainly competently assembled but it constantly stops short of being something noteworthy.
If you’re determined to run off and see Wolf Man, put those expectations in check. It’s now playing as of today, January 17.
One Last Thought:
I don’t know why – maybe it’s just because the film meandered too much and my mind kept wandering off – but I kept hyper-focusing on the way in which two of the curliest-haired people ever managed to have a daughter with perfectly straight hair.