A few years ago, Universal was hell bent on building a cinematic universe based on the model of Marvel and Co. from the film monsters in its inventory. Led by Tom Cruise and the Mummy, interwoven films were to be created that brought together the greatest horror legends on the screen. But the starting signal failed and led to a complete reset.
In collaboration with the horror company Blumhouse, Universal said goodbye to any franchise idea and released its monsters for revival. The first attempt was a success: The Invisible Man by Leigh Whannell turned out to be a contemporary update of the horror classic and got under your skin with every shot. Unfortunately, Wolf Man cannot repeat this feat.
From Ryan Gosling to Christopher Abbott: The Wolf Man is now raging in the present
Originally announced to star Ryan Gosling, Wolf Man has changed several times in recent years. While it was initially media-obsessed films like Nightcrawler and Network that inspired the reboot, now we’re dealing with a nightmare in the woods of Oregon. There is no trace of civilization anywhere, and certainly not of disturbing news broadcasts.
You can watch the trailer for Wolf Man here:
Wolf Man – Trailer (German) HD
Only one thing has remained: The new Wolf Man takes place in the present and thus moves away from classic interpretations of the material that rely on old-fashioned settings, such as Joe Johnston’s version from 2010. Just like with The Invisible Man, director and co-writer Whannell is looking for this Horror in the here and now – with a wealthy family from the city who are becoming more and more alienated from themselves.
When writer Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) inherits his father’s remote house, he wants to make a fresh start. His relationship with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) could hardly be more distant. He often loses his temper towards his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). Out of San Francisco and into nature: the change of location is intended to create new closeness, but pure darkness follows.
In Oregon, horror awaits the Lovells before they can unload their luggage. In fact, their car doesn’t even make it to the deceased father’s property. The reason for this is a strange creature that suddenly appears in the middle of the road and forces Blake to take a breakneck evasive maneuver that ends in a Jurassic Park memory sequence – the car ends up in a tree.
Groaning metal, cracking branches: at any moment the family could fall to their death, while a monster with a frightening face approaches in the rearview mirror – the T-Rex, so to speak. From this point on, Wolf Man unfolds as a fight for survival. Whannell uses the following night to recount the disintegration that follows an initially inconspicuous but ultimately fateful scratch.
Wolf Man could be the perfect counterpart to The Invisible Man, but he is significantly weaker
The tragedy that lies dormant in Wolf Man offers itself as a counterpart to The Invisible Man. Five years ago, Elisabeth Moss had to escape a toxic relationship. Her husband, on the surface a sensible scientist, turned out to be a psychopath and manipulator who was not afraid of gaslighting or violence. Wolf Man, on the other hand, focuses on a fragile image of masculinity.
Blake only learned toughness and discipline from his father. In the film’s prologue, which is set 30 years in the past, he marches through the forest as a child with a rifle in his hand – looking for his dinner. There is a bleak military regime in his home that still haunts him to this day. The last thing Blake wants to do is become like his wayward father.
What is even more shocking is the realization that he no longer has control over himself after coming into contact with the beast. The transformation, the centerpiece of every werewolf film, connects Whannell to what is, in theory, an incredibly sad story: in an attempt to bring his family back together, Blake loses his ability to communicate and becomes an animalistic danger to those he loves.
The camera repeatedly puts us in his perspective and shows how he has completely lost his sense of interpersonal contact. Colors change, words no longer make sense and every noise, no matter how inconspicuous, terrorizes him in the form of an unbearable hammering in his head. He is present and absent at the same time. And his urges banish him to eternal loneliness.
However, Whannell fails to express this tragic core in his film. For around 100 minutes, the camera chases us from one indefinable place full of darkness to the next and – even with the entire iconography of the werewolf myth behind us – does not create a single memorable image. Julia Garner and Christopher Abbott are lost in a meaningless production.
Despite exciting themes, Wolf Man disappoints as a terribly dull horror update
Even the exciting trick of setting up the film as a countdown to dawn remains ineffective for long stretches. It merely assures us that this haphazard back and forth will eventually come to an end, but first we have to endure obligatory jump scares and a clumsy treatment of family conflict. It’s as if the film doesn’t want to come into contact with its own beast.
Transformations and spreading diseases are not an uninteresting topic in post-pandemic times, especially with the diverse possibilities of a genre film that can deliberately exaggerate fears and dangers. But just like the fragility of the (Wolf)man at the center of the story, Whannell remains surprisingly toothless when it comes to the protagonist’s isolation from his family.
Especially after The Invisible Man, in which you just wanted to tiptoe around the cinema for fear of being caught, this haphazardly orchestrated Wolf Man is a huge disappointment. Whannell has thought about how he can modernize the material, but in the implementation he lacks flair, ingenuity and, above all, one thing: the power of persuasion. Has the new universal monster era already exhausted?
Wolf Man has been running in German cinemas since January 23, 2025.