Blake is currently between gigs, he is apparently a writer, and spends his time doting on his young daughter Ginger. The dude grew up in the Oregon wilderness and was subjected to a strict traumatic upbringing by his father. The situation was so bad that Blake exited stage left as soon as possible and was completely estranged from Daddy dearest. Seems seven years have now passed since Blake’s dad went missing from the isolated Pacific Northwest home, as Dad has just been declared legally dead. Blake decides it would be a real good thing if he visits the isolated family cabin with his career orientated wife Charlotte and their daughter. Problems with Blake and Charlotte’s marriage force the change of location, and what possibly could go wrong with the family visiting a cabin in the woods. Well the marriage does get a boost as Blake and family are attacked by something vaguely seen, Blake is wounded by the beast, and he starts going through changes. Ready to check out a modern werewolf saga, let’s howl at the moon.

In 1941 The Wolf Man established a new monster for Universal Studios, one which has echoed down the ages and established an entire subgenre. Flash forward to 2017, yes imagine wavy lines, and The Mummy was released as an attempt was made to establish Universal’s Dark Universe, a sort of horror version of the MCU. Rumour has it Tom Cruise did a Rachel Zegler and interfered so much in the final movie that we got the box office disaster The Mummy turned out to be. Enter Leigh Whannell with a remake of The Invisible Man (2020), a highly successful remake of the 1933 original. Actually I put down that success to a most excellent performance by Elisabeth Moss. Now Whannell dials in again with Wolf Man and a lot of us took notice and got excited by the possibilities, unfortunately the movie didn’t live up to expectations. Let’s break it down.

On the bright side of the fang, the cinematography is sensational, rich and lush with the day time long shots almost worth the price of admission alone. Unfortunately, during the night time scenes it’s almost too dark to see what the heck is happening, I was squinting at stages trying to make out what the hell was going down on my screen. Maybe this movie looks great in 4K, but in lesser modes it’s a stretch to concentrate on the narrative. Still those day time long shots are wonderful.

Creature feature wise the movie fails on all levels. We get some minor transformation, but apparently the science has gotten worse since Dee Wallace went wolf in The Howling (1981). There’s only so many shots of fangs and claws we can get before the audience are screaming to see the full transformation, what should be a standard of the subgenre. The final result, there’s no changing during the full moon here, it’s one and done, present the less hirsute side of the paw. If I had to be brutally honest the final wolf form looks either like someone either suffering from radiation poisoning or a doggy with mange. Whichever way you swing, snigger, the creature effects are terrible – seriously it’s like we have gone back fifty years.

Leigh Whannell and wife Corbett Tuck deliver the script for this one, and if we had to be brutally honest, that script is pretty much a rehash of previous scripts and goes nowhere the audience isn’t expecting. So Blake’s dad is declared dead after seven years, wonder what happened to the dude, no gold stars for seeing that plot device lumbering over the horizon. Blake is getting increasingly bity as he goes through changes, but takes time out of his busy schedule to save his family from Daddy dearest, then tries to attack his wife and daughter, before finally doing a “its beauty that killed the beast” moment, beauty being his daughter here. So nothing new there, and if you can’t pick each plot development then seriously start watching rom-coms. 

The script tries to develop some tension between Blake and wife Charlotte in the scenes filmed in the city. Clearly Charlotte is work focused, rather than family focused, but this sort of goes nowhere as Charlotte apparently has no issues going into the woods, guess those journalistic deadlines are moot in this universe. In fact, the trip to Oregon is pushed as a chance for Blake and Charlotte to reconcile, which is then dropped as soon as we hit the cabin in the woods. Seriously bad script development, but hey it gets worse.

Blake is estranged from his father due to Dad trying to keep him safe. If you ever went hunting with your own Dad as a kid, then I don’t think you will get anything like a child abuse vibe here. The script is so wide of the mark on this point that you could be forgiven for thinking you are watching some sort of parody. Naturally Blake repeats Dad’s parenting style with his daughter, well at least in one scene where Ginger climbs up on some of those plastic barriers, naturally he goes into full soy boy mode after he realises that Ginger is shocked by his reaction. And that would be the full extent of that plot theme, never comes up again, done and dusted. Seriously, the script is well below par with themes introduced and then then forgotten about.

I wanted to finish the review on a positive note and there are a couple of scenes that really resonate with me. When Dad and Blake are in the woods, you know the part where the movie is trying to establish a major theme, they both become aware of something hidden, watching from the trees. For a couple of seconds there is a ring of crystal, as Stephen King is apt to say, and I was thinking sign Whannell up to the next Predator movie stat. Equally while Blake is transforming, no not into a car, he hears something upstairs and to be honest I was thinking the creature had broken in as well. He eventually investigates a closet and discovers the noise is being caused by a rather large spider climbing around inside it. Each sound note is the spider’s leg hitting the wood of the closet. At once it is a gross concept, for those of us that are arachnophobia, but more importantly highlights Blake is going through changes. Unfortunately, that’s it for disclosing the new abilities Blake is developing. We do get some optics from Blake’s POV, but they aren’t as effective in my opinion.

I was looking forward to Wolf Man mainly due to director Whannell’s work with the previous Universal monster flick The Invisible Man, but have to say I was disappointed. The script is trite, there is no development that surprised me, and every plot point is obvious to the viewer. The horror tactics are poor, there’s not even a good old jump scare, it’s all pretty bland to be honest. The acting is at least half decent, though Julia Garner (Charlotte) is completely underused for mine, though if I had to be honest I’m not entirely sure she can carry a movie. Hey if she disproves that statement in her next role then all power to Ms Garner. So no recommendation on this one, though I guess Whannell fans are going to be across the movie regardless. What the movie did make me want is to watch another lupine flick however, so yeah I guess it had an impact, though not the one it might have intended. I wasn’t howling at the moon over this movie, Whannell sure can do better, and I give everyone at least one bad flick. Still looking forward to the Director/Writer’s next movie.