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Wolf Man (2025) review

Dir. Leigh Whannell

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

“Leigh Whannell has rewritten the blueprint for how to successfully remake and reimagine a horror classic,” I wrote in my review of his reboot of The Invisible Man five years ago. That movie caught me off guard. Permitted to color outside the lines of Universal’s miserable failure that was the “Dark Universe,” Whannell opted to take the premise of the classic monster movie and strip it down to its fundamentals. It was about an invisible person lurking among us; the thought of someone making your life a living hell with no consequences. Moreover, it was a movie about the vulnerability of an already traumatized woman, who yet again was confronted with the sick circumstance of absolutely no one believing her plight was real.

The Invisible Man was slick, scary, and satisfying. The rare four-star horror movie that furthered emphasized Whannell’s greatness as a writer/director. There was all the reason in the world to be excited when he was announced as the one who would helm Wolf Man, a reboot of my personal favorite Universal monster movie from 1941. That excitement drains rapidly after an engaging first act dissolves into rudimentary jump scares with the lack of character development catching up to the story. On top of that, its descent into literal darkness makes this one of the most visually ugly horror movies perhaps since Albino Farm, which at least had the excuse of being shot on a shoestring budget.

Whannell and co-writer Corbett Tuck omit much of the mythology inherent to the classic story. The state of the moon and the presence of silver are all irrelevant. This is a story of psychological torment and childhood trauma, with the wolf creature itself not even looking very convincing. The latter isn’t so much a complaint, but an observation, especially when Whannell makes his intentions clear early on that this is a story of a father not trying to raise his daughter with the same paranoia and fear that his dad instilled in him.

That man is Blake (Christopher Abbott), whose survivalist father’s overbearing nature kept him alive in the wooded mountains of Oregon, but fostered an element of doubt and emotional distance in him as well. Now in his 30s, living in the city and working as a writer, he finds himself on a different page with his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). Blake receives word that his father has legally been declared dead, and receives the keys to his childhood home. This seems like as good a time as any to show Charlotte and Ginger where daddy grew up.

Before even reaching the home, the family are attacked by a wolf creature in their moving truck, narrowly escaping death in one of the film’s most playful scenes. Whannell stages the car crash from a third person, Grand Theft Auto-esque point of view, the result of the collision therein only becoming clear as his camera swirls around the accident and sees the truck at uneasy rest on the edge of a cliff, pinned between two trees. The three escape and finally reach the house, but not before Blake finds his arm sliced by something inhuman. His uncontrollable sweats soon result in him going mute, and then morphing into something awful right before his family’s eyes.

Whannell made clear early on in The Invisible Man that he was going to rework the formula into something modern yet faithful. Wolf Man feels like a classic monster movie, but even on the basis of its intentions, comes up short and feels formulaic to a fault. For one, Blake doesn’t turn into a full-blown wolf, per se. He’s more of an untamed, rabid dog. The thought that he could be at least trained comes into play, but it’s made clear from relatively early during his transformation that Blake feels like he’s dying and actively wants to die. Thus, the film lumbers towards an inevitability that robs it of the intrigue brought on by a haunting opening sequence and setup.

Things only get shaggier for Whannell’s Wolf Man when character development is abandoned. So much of the film hinges on the success of Abbott’s performance, which transcends from reserved to unpredictable to entirely physical. In all three phases, Abbott plays tortured extremely well. His descent into inhumanity is tragic to witness. That said, there’s not much meat to Blake and Charlotte’s marital troubles. He’s too reactionary. She works too much. Although they are only eight years apart in real life, Abbott and Garner, from an appearance standpoint, resemble father and daughter more than husband and wife, with a lack of chemistry compounding their dynamic. The same can’t be said about Abbott and Matilda Firth, who definitely pass as father and daughter in their shared scenes. Garner feels miscast.

Then there’s the darkness. This is a grim story, but being able to see what is occurring on-screen is one of the most basic attributes of a film (the rule doesn’t apply to Stan Brakhage, but I digress). The longer Wolf Man goes, the darker Stefan Duscio’s photography gets to the point where much of the climax is downright ugly and indistinguishable. It’s so dark that certain moments that show us Blake’s warped perspective of reality — where everything is blue, black, and indigo and eyes glow — doesn’t feel gimmicky and instead feels like a relief for the retinas.

In a year already shaping up to be instantly memorable for the horror genre with Presence, Companion, The Monkey, and Drop coming within the next few months, and a new Final Destination, Frankenstein, and Saw expected to follow, Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man was expected to be at least among the cream to rise near the top. Instead, it sinks, although my faith in the 48-year-old Australian doesn’t waver. However, if his next project is an update of The Black Cat and it comes up as short as his latest, there will be a reconciliation on my part and a reevaluation of my cinematic values.