Wolf Man (2025)
Directed by: Leigh Whannell
Premise: A family is stranded in a remote farmhouse while a werewolf lurks outside. The father (Christopher Abbott) is injured by the creature and gradually metamorphosizes.
What Works: Wolf Man brings a somewhat fresh approach to the werewolf concept. The core of it is familiar but the filmmakers have come up with an interesting take on lycanthropy. At the root of the werewolf story is the fear our own bestial nature. 2025’s Wolf Man puts a contemporary gender-related spin on the material. The father, played by Christopher Abbott, was raised by a tough military-style parent but now a family man himself, Abbott’s character has taken a softer approach with his daughter. Wolf Man dramatizes the fear among parents, specifically men, that we might hurt the ones we love. For the past four decades, cinematic conceptions of werewolves have been dominated by the effects work of The Howling and An American Werewolf in London in which the canine features were most emphasized. The creature design of 2025’s Wolf Man shows some influence of 1941’s The Wolf Man and 1994’s Wolf in the way it merges both primate and carnivora qualities. The new film also plays with the division between man and beast by putting the consciousness of Abbott’s character in question. The daytime scenes of Wolf Man are quite well done and the landscape is used effectively. The film is fairly scary especially in the way the family is trapped in a house with a threat on the outside and a growing threat on the inside. The film is assisted by a believable family. The couple is played by Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner and early scenes establish a credible rift in the marriage.
What Doesn’t: The marital conflict gives the family some characterization but Wolf Man doesn’t really do anything with it. The problems in the marriage don’t really inform the central conflict nor are they resolved in the ending. The same is true of the themes of gender and violence. This version of Wolf Man sets up an interesting subtext but the filmmakers don’t carry those ideas to a coherent conclusion. The daytime scenes of Wolf Man are well shot but the nighttime scenes, which consist of most of the movie, are not. The imagery is often murky and the action is hard to follow especially during the interior scenes.
Bottom Line: 2025’s Wolf Man reimagines the classic story with mixed results. It’s passably scary and brings some novel components to the lycanthropy story. It’s also thematically incomplete and technically inconsistent.
Episode: #1034 (February 2, 2025)