WOLF MAN
(director/writer:Leigh Whannell; screenwriter: Corbett Tuck; cinematographer: Stefan Duscio; editor: Andy Canny; music: Benjamin Wallfisch; cast: Christopher Abbott (Blake), Julia Garner (Charlotte), Sam Jaeger (Grady), Matilda Firth (Ginger), Zac Chandler (Young Blake); Runtime: 103; MPAA Rating: R; producer: Jason Blum; Universal Pictures; 2025)
“A letdown from the masterful original.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Aussie filmmaker Leigh Whannell (“The Invisible Man”/”Saw: The Final Chapter”) directs and co-writes with Corbett Tuck this sequel that’s loosely based on Universal’s classic 1941 monster pic that starred Lon Chaney.
The conventional horror pic opens at a beautiful dreamlike forest in a remote valley in central Oregon. The bossy local survivalist farmer Grady (Sam Jaeger) lives there with his impressionable young son Blake (Zac Chandler). He raises his son with a harsh military-style discipline, and as he teaches him how to survive in the woods he warns him to keep away from predators and be wary of “Hills Fever,” an animal-like virus that the local Indigenous call “the Face of the Wolf.”
Thirty years later Blake (Christopher Abbott) is an unemployed writer living in San Francisco. He worries that his young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) doesn’t listen to his warnings about the dangers of ancient curses.
His estranged father is presumed dead, and he inherits the family farm. Blake’s breadwinner wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) is a workaholic journalist and lets hubby raise their daughter, as they struggle in a tense marriage. Blake returns with his wife and daughter to his father’s wilderness empty cabin to inspect his inheritance. When their vehicle swerves off the road, the family is pursued by a creature (half-man & half-animal) and they barricade themselves in the cabin. But in the woods, the creature scratched Blake and he turns into the titular creature.
What follows are several suspenseful set pieces.
But the film stagnates with Blake’s marriage woes not fully told and from an unconvincing modernized werewolf story that’s dimly told from the creature’s infrared POV. It hints at children suffering from the sins of their fathers, but leaves us more aghast than curious about its take on the werewolf legend.
The remake is a letdown from the masterful original, as it can’t match the original’s psychological impact. Also by messing around with a classic, the filmmaker has left it without as much fun or gusto.
REVIEWED ON 1/19/2025 Grade: C+
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