Title: Wolf Man
Describe This Movie In One That Moon Song Lyric:
GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV: She pulls on my heart / Like she pulls on the sea
Brief Plot Synopsis: This werewolf is not drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s. And his hair is far from perfect.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2.5 Robert Weston Smiths out of 5.
Tagline: “Protect your own.”
Better Tagline: “Stalked in the forest, too close to hide.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) didn’t have a great childhood, growing up in rural Oregon with a hardass father (Sam Jaeger) obsessed with the legend of a hiker who disappeared in the woods and was rumored to be afflicted with a curse the local indigenous tribes called “face of the wolf.” 30 years later, Blake is a struggling writer in NYC, married to Charlotte (Julia Garner), and father to Ginger (Matilda Firth). When he receives word that his long-missing father has been officially declared dead by the state, he decides to take the fam back to old homestead.
“Critical” Analysis: Besides Warner Brothers’ attempts to play catch-up with the MCU, has any pantheon of classic characters been mishandled more than Universal’s monsters?
It’s easy to lose track of all the iterations the studio had tried over the last couple decades. The Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz Mummy franchise showed promise until getting hamstrung by lousy CGI and Poor Sequel Syndrome, with Van Helsing being the rather emphatic end of Mummy director Stephen Sommers’ attempts to establish a legacy.
The less said about the farcical “Dark Universe,” the better … but who can resist? Originally slated to kick off with Dracula Untold, then hastily pulled back when that film bombed. Universal thought they’d surely captured lightning in a bottle with The Mummy (2017), the movie that proved not even Tom Cruise can outrun cinematic incoherence. Alas, that movie’s failure torpedoed the planned franchise.
Or maybe not “alas,” depending on your feelings about Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man.
Speaking of that, Wolf Man director Leigh Whannell (co-creator of the Saw franchise) was the first to represent a new standalone direction with his adaptation of The Invisible Man. It had the misfortune of being released just weeks before the global COVID lockdown, and was shunted to VOD a mere three weeks later. It’s a damn shame, too, because it’s an ambitious, terrifying work.
Expectations for Wolf Man were therefore pretty elevated, at least for some of us (raises hand). And while it says some interesting things about monster family dynamics and features a few effective scares, it’s clear from this that Whannell is not going to spearhead a new renaissance for Universal’s monsters.
I’d be interested to hear some of the pre-production discussion on this. Or what was left on the cutting room floor, especially with regards to Julia Garner’s character. All we know from the outset is that Charlotte’s a workaholic, but some other background information might be nice to augment how it took a monster attack to bring out her best.
Whannell gives a little more meat to the story behind Blake and his dad, but only just. Young Blake had reason to fear and eventually leave his father, enough to ensure he didn’t repeat those mistakes with his own daughter. Unfortunately, the payoff for this is easy to see coming.
The creature design is also … a choice. The decision to switch perspectives between the rapidly transforming Blake as he interacts with Charlene and Ginger is intriguing, and more of that kind of weirdness would have better distracted from a “wolf man” that looks more like a consumptive Australopithecus.
There have been innovative takes on cinematic lycanthropy: Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers, An American Werewolf in London, to name a few. Whannell’s approach wants to recall the dying humanity in the werewolf character that dates all the way back to Lon Chaney, Jr., but the marrying of ancient fears with modern tech that made Invisible Man so intriguing is completely missing here. To put it in blurb form, not all Wolf Man’s dogs are barking.
Ask A 15-Year Old:
RFTED: So, what did we learn?
15YO: Huh?
RFTED: What do you do if dad turns into a werewolf?
15YO: Oh, two to the dome.
Wolf Man is in theaters today.
