WOLF MAN (in theaters but not for long), sans “THE” in the title, stinks. It isn’t just weak tea compared to the 1941 classic but fails miserably measured against the drive-in quickie I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF or the underrated atom age THE WEREWOLF.
Over driven-career woman (OZARK’s Julie Garner) needs to connect with her daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), who’s more closely parented by loving dad Blake (Christopher Lovell), who will revert into the title beastie. In a flashback, we meet young Blake on hunting trips in Oregon forests with his militaristic, gun-loving Dad (an imposing Sam Jaeger), who’s paranoid about the dangers of the wild. In present-day Manhattan, Blake learns that his estranged dad (who ran off into the woods and vanished) is finally presumed dead. So Blake moves his wife and daughter to the family farm to dispense with the place. They’re attacked by a were-beast that stands aloft. Blake is bitten, and you can guess the rest.
Any werewolf story invariably has Jekyll & Hyde elements. The monster, usually an innocent who undeservedly carries the curse (a tradition established in 1935’s WEREWOLF OF LONDON), must contend with their confusion and guilt during their human hours. Once the family hits the woods, WOLF MAN’s fatal error is taking place entirely in one night (!). This means its doomed hero has to arc from loving dad to infected crazy, furry wrestler grappling with the werewolf who attacked him, then threatening his own family, and finally seeking resolution in death. This rushed storyline plays like a flash fiction version of Cronenberg’s masterful THE FLY.
Speaking of that film, much of the makeup here (derided by gorehounds who are giving it a claw – vs. thumbs–down) seems more in sync with a zombie story. By the time Blake’s features degenerate into wolfie qualities, the audience is numbed by Charlotte and Ginger running back and forth to the farmhouse, a greenhouse, a truck, and a tree house. The cast is game, but the largely solitary setting limits the action, and the teeny number of characters denies our werewolf a single kill!
WOLF MAN feels like a pandemic hangover. That may be because director and co-writer Leigh Whannell’s previous work, THE INVISIBLE MAN, was the last Hollywood film many of us saw theatrically before the COVID lockdown. Whannell delivered a fresh take on THE INVISIBLE MAN by focusing not on the title character but his stalked victim (Elisabeth Moss).
Here, the focus on a tormented family gets water logged by too much on-the-nose pathos and an overbearing musical score. Though the action is frenetic, WOLF MAN ultimately feels as harmless (and toothless) as Mike Nichol’s forgotten WOLF with Jack Nicholson (another example of a pair of battling werewolves devoid of chills). In other words, spayed.
Eric Lindbom is a hardcore horror buff with a strong stomach, weaned on the Universal classics from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s written film and/or music reviews for City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, LA WEEKLY, Request magazine and Netflix. He co-edits triggerwarningshortfiction.com, a site specializing in horror, fantasy and crime short stories with illustrations by co-editor John Skewes. He lives in Los Angeles.
