Directed by: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Christopher Abbot, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger

Coming off the new year and the holidays, it’s reasonable to have low expectations for a horror film debuting in January. After all, it would have had to contend with offerings like A Complete Unknown (2024) and Nosferatu (2024) – both of which saw critical and commercial success. With subjects like Bob Dylan and Dracula, these films had a proven path to success if executed well. But the werewolf is arguably one of the least popular of the silver screen monsters of late, at least since the entertaining An American Werewolf in London (1981). And with Wolf Man, Blumhouse tries to give this classic monster an emotional makeover.

Blake Lovell (Abbot) is a writer in between jobs and lives in the city with Charlotte (Garner) and their young daughter Ginger (Firth). Still reeling from a strict and traumatic upbringing, Blake finds out about his dad’s passing in rural Oregon and ventures homeward – U-Haul, Charlotte, and Ginger in tow to handle his father’s estate and to relieve the strain on his marriage. Upon reaching his father’s property, they are surprised and attacked by a fierce creature – crashing their truck and its claws wounding Blake. For protection, he leads Charlotte and Ginger to the farmhouse where he grew up as a boy. As the hours pass into the night, Blake falls ill and begins a rapid metamorphosis into a beastly creature, inevitably endangering the lives of Charlotte and Ginger.

Director Whannell, who most famously co-created the Saw franchise with James Wan, found some success with later installments of Insidious, most notably The Invisible Man (2020), which he wrote and produced. With Wolf Man, he handles similar duties in a valiant effort to makeover an often overlooked and unsexy character from Hollywood’s golden age. He does it for the first half of the film by focusing on the domestic trauma of Blake Lovell’s childhood. Abbot is very good at unraveling Blake and is believable, adding another dimension to the character.

However, about halfway through, Wolf Man goes down that well-worn, trodden path of cliché and predictability. To be fair, the arc of the werewolf story is well-known as is the case with Egger’s Nosferatu (a prime example of a classic story, redone with modern colors). There are well-placed scares and Cronenberg-like gore as well as innovative POV shifts between Charlotte and Blake-wolf. But there are also laughable scenes (dark empty barn, anyone?) that take it 2 steps back into silliness.

It’s apparent that the filmmakers wanted to do something different with Wolf Man – less focus on Blake’s physical transformation and more on his damaged psyche as the heart of the film. That effort is appreciated and for some, enough to make it a worthwhile watch. But unfortunately, Wolf Man runs out of gas halfway through the last lap and we are left jogging through familiar territory. By the time we hit the finish line, we are back where we started.

So have you seen WOLF MAN? Well, what do you think?

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