January 18, 2025
Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) lives in San Francisco with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). One day, he received news that his estranged father, who had gone missing for a long time, was now presumed dead. Blake was given the keys to their old home in the woods of Oregon, so he decided to bring his family up there to check it out, and also in an effort to rekindle his shaky relationship with Charlotte.
In a prologue set 30 years ago, we meet Blake as a young boy, raised by his single father Grady (Sam Jaeger) with military discipline. He was quite hot-headed and would reprimand Blake harshly when he did not obey his instructions. One day, father and son went into the woods on a hunting trip and had an encounter with a shadowy creature. Grady believed that they had seen the hiker with a wolf's head terrorizing that neck of the woods.
After the disastrous run of the infamous "The Mummy" (2017) despite its big star Tom Cruise, Universal Pictures' plan for a Dark Universe franchise of monster films tanked along with it. However, interest in this series of films was revived with the commercial and critical success of "The Invisible Man" (2020), directed by Leigh Whannell. Whannell then accepted the offer to write and direct a reboot of the 1941 original monster film "The Wolf Man."
Leigh Whannell is really a master of the horror genre, from writing films for his friend and collaborator James Wan ("Saw," "Insidious") to directing films on his own ("Insidious; Chapter 3" and "Upgrade"). He knew very well how to build up suspense, many times using very subtle clues to create an atmosphere of dread. He knew where to position his cameras in order to set up the best jump scares and to capture the best views of action scenes for maximal impact.
As much as this film was about the titular Wolf Man, it was also as much about the relationship of fathers with their families. After seeing him as The Foreigner in "Kraven the Hunter" last month, Christopher Abbott showed off more of his acting skills here especially in those wordless scenes when Blake was turning lupine. Julia Garner seemed uncomfortable in her role as Charlotte, a role far removed from her splashier turn in "Inventing Anna" (2022).
The transformation of Blake into the Wolf Man did not happen in just one continuous scene, as it had usually been done in the past. Whannell did it in stages, where the physical changes occur gradually -- teeth falling out, hearing gaining acuity, speech getting lost, fur and claws growing out, body shape deforming. The gradual loss of his human consciousness allowed for more dramatic interaction between Blake and his family, which was very good. 6/10
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