At the heart of any good werewolf story, there is both a tale of great sadness and one of great brutality. And the success of these narratives often depends on how the two parts balance against one another. In Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, both the elements of sadness and brutality are in play to great effect and deftly woven together into a thoughtful meditation on the nature of violence in humanity. In its perfectly tight run time, Wolf Man unfurls a beautifully tragic reflection about how humans’ own capacity for brutality molds them and impacts those who they love—especially from parent to child, but also from husband to wife. But, of course, the movie also makes time to build much heart-pounding tension, offer a bevvy of jump scares, and bring us some good old-fashioned gore to shield our eyes from. Taken together, Wolf Man delivers on many different fronts as it takes us through one harrowing night.
On the face of it, the Wolf Man does not tell a very complicated story—and seems to lean more toward delivering a standard horror movie, filled with tension and fear, than an elegant deep dive into the human psyche. Deciding to return to his childhood home in the incredibly isolated rural Oregon after the state declares his estranged father dead, a husband/father (Blake) brings his whole family (wife Charlotte and daughter Ginger) into terrible danger. On the way to the home, a monstrous creature attacks them and then stalks them into the night. But, of course, Blake himself begins transforming as well after the beast cuts him. And as the night stretches before them, many dangers wait.
And, indeed, Whannell is able to deliver on the promise of some unadulterated monster movie horror fun. Wolf Man artfully uses every filmmaking facet available to it, its shot framing, sound, and lighting, to rachet up our fear. Shots become dizzying, noises become distorted, and darkness falls all around us at every turn. Whannell uses our own very real fears against us to thrust us into the terror the characters experience. Most notably, the fear that we will find ourselves simply unable to communicate with those around us surfaces again and again. And it pairs with the terror that others will ignore our fear or receive it without empathy.
The movie also knows how to serve a heaping of stomach-churning gore—and seems to particularly delight in proferring some of the most viscerally disturbing elements it can to its viewers. Yes, we’re talking about teeth falling out, fingernails ripping off, and big chunks of hair coming unglued. It was enough to make several people in the theater hide their eyes.
But, indeed, the scariest monsters of all featured in the movie are the very real specters it deals with—the creatures that might haunt every single audience member who goes to watch Wolf Man in one way or another. In a very intimate way, Wolf Man‘s most haunting howls are those of generational trauma and violence and the way that “sickness” can spread even despite the real truth of love, desire for change, or an escape into a different kind of life.
One of the scariest scenes of the movie is its opening sequence, where we see more about what formed Blake and the harrowing life he lived with his father in his childhood. Although the Wolf Man does appear in this opening, by and large, the greatest source of unease and threat to the audience is Blake’s father. Clearly, Blake fears his father more than anything else in the woods. And Blake’s father also keeps him tremendously isolated as he drills into him ideas of death and danger. The threat of violence, although not fully realized, clings to him like a second skin, seeping into Blake and all of us.
Not too long after, we see Blake as a father of his own. While his daughter is clearly attached to him, and he clearly wishes to be better than his father than his own was, even before becoming any kind of supernatural creature at all, we see Blake falling into his father’s pattern, falling into deep anger (a form of violence) at the very innocent patterings of his child around him.
“What if someone you loved became something else?” is one of the tag lines the Wolf Man movie presents us with. But the crux of the story feels more like, “What if the something else was someone you loved all along?” Although the scares and growling snarls of Wolf Man are horror genius, the true horror is that the story of this movie could easily be about garden variety anger taking over for a night instead of a supernatural disease, and it would still read pretty similarly, in ways that are sadly all too common. But that is the genius of the movie Whannell presents us with. While the claws and sudden pours of blood are terrifying, at its heart, the movie’s real fear-generating mechanism is something like: “A man in the room is a physical danger to you, and the danger is you can’t get out.” And in some way or another, many audience members will have faced this clawing danger themselves.
Between a particularly intense scene where Charlotte stands frozen as Blake menaces close to her in his changing form, on that screams of “maybe if I just stand still,” and another, where Ginger (the daughter) begs Charlotte to overcome her most primal instincts to let a turning Blake back into their sanctuary and preserve the familial bond, if not their personal safety, it seems clear that Wolf Man wants to shed a light on very human fears and dangers, as much as it does on those that come from a werewolf. Indeed, feels extra meaningful that the werewolves of this tale never hit a full transformation and instead very much retain their human forms, although they change along some incredibly disturbing lines. The movie doesn’t offer a very clear conclusion on whether generational trauma and violence can be mitigated or overcome, but it certainly makes you want to think, discuss, and consider the hidden wolves in your life, big and small.
In addition to all of this, I will note that Wolf Man‘s second act surprised me pleasantly, and though I thought I knew the plot of the film going in, I was pleasantly subverted along the way. And, of course, as a consummate horror fan, Whannell leaves fun werewolf Easter eggs for fans to discover along the way. For example, Blake’s red-headed daughter called Ginger no doubt homages Ginger Snaps‘ wolfy Ginger.
And, as mentioned, the runtime of the film (1 hour and 43 minutes) felt just right, allowing for a streamlined story that neither wasted time nor felt undersold. Watching Wolf Man is definitely one of the best uses of under two hours of your time. Choosing for the movie to take place all in one night also kept the scope of the story confined in a way that really worked, letting it focus on its simmering themes and nuanced emotional tale. Full kudos to Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck for the excellent script and to Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, and Matilda Firth for their great performances.
As a whole, Wolf Man delivered on many of its fronts and threaded a very fine needle. It created a fun monster movie that horror fans will love while also telling a poignant tale of tragedy and sorrow that will resonate in anyone with a pulse (human, wolf-like, or other). It’s definitely a film that will make you think as it terrifies you, and more worth revisiting more than once.
Wolf Man hits theaters on January 17, 2025.
