I saw The Wolfman recently, and here are my thoughts.
Writer Blake takes his family to his father’s cabin in the woods to help ease family tensions… Only to be attacked by some sort of wolf-like man, and then slowly become one himself.
Leigh Whannell’s direction is good; he’s a master of building tension, makes interesting and effective camera choices, and knows how to get good performances out of his actors.
The main actor, played by Christopher Abbott, gives a very good performance. He really knows how to act in a way that makes subtle internal acting choices come off as very powerful and intense. He knows how to convey a lot while doing little, and you can really tell the internal struggle his character is going through.
Julia Garner is good as his wife; she gives a very natural, down-to-earth, realistic performance.
There’s a little girl in this who’s pretty good; for a 10-year-old, she handles a lot of big emotions and concepts that would normally be out of an actor of her age range, but it’s impressive how mature and natural her character deals with them while also coming off as funny and silly in parts.
So some footage of the Wolfman design leaked before the movie came out from a Universal theme park scare night attraction, and to be honest, I definitely threw some shade at it. I thought it looked like the hillbilly inbred cannibal character “Three Fingers” from the Wrong Turn series, who looks nothing like a Wolf Man. So I like, “Really, this is the design we’re going with, a redneck with a bad skin condition lol” (plus it was filmed during the day and on a regular camera, so it was not doing itself any favors). But having seen the film, it comes off much better within the story… It’s filmed at night with a lot of shadow, which definitely helps; you see the transformation in stages, higher-end makeup effects and prosthetics, and color grading all come together to help you buy the look, which, combined with the acting, makes it much more convincing and wolf-like. So for all of you out there worried that this would not work, it works within the movie and does look like a Wolfman.
I liked the new take on the werewolf mythos, where it’s more of a virus like in “28 Days Later” or “Resident Evil.”. Plus they include other cool ideas, like how the transformation affected Blake's hearing, so everything was enhanced (the sound mixing feels like a character in and of itself, so big ups to the sound department). Blake would struggle to understand what people were saying; also, he started to get this like glow-in-the-dark, bright-colored vision that also distorted people's faces. All of these little details were very interesting and felt fresh.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is just kind of... plain. Like I wouldn’t say this is a bad movie, but so much of it is an “in real time survival under siege” movie. So there’s not a lot of dialogue or in-depth character interactions; most of the film is characters either trying to figure out how to survive, walking around dark corridors looking scared, or trying to defend themselves against a Wolfman… It gets very rinse and repeat. And when they do have dialogue, it’s nothing special. It’s a lot of “I love you” and “You mean so much to me” and stuff like that. It’s all big love confessions you’ve heard in romantic dramas or Hallmark movies before.
There’s a theme of generational trauma in the film; Blake’s father was very stern with him, and Blake got a little bit of an angry side that he’s trying to deal with and not pass down to his daughter… Very “he’s got a beast inside him that was given to him by his dad,” which is very much a metaphor for being like a werewolf… Which is an interesting idea, but they introduce it and do not end up doing a lot with it. Also towards the end there are some pieces of dialogue that really spell out the theme that makes it feel like the filmmakers are going, “OK, we really gotta hit this on the nose so people know what we’re talking about, so let’s really spell it out,” and it’s like… You didn’t have to go that far; we got it.
This movie’s been getting a lot of criticism, and while I don’t think it’s as bad as people say, I do understand their criticism, but I wouldn’t say this is a bad movie; it’s not. The actors all do a good job; Leigh Whannell knows how to build tension, plus the film looks good. Unfortunately, the overall story is just so straightforward and ordinary that there isn’t much to get out of it besides regular jump scares and watching people fight to survive. It’s like a werewolf biting the skin and muscles off your arm… It’s too bare-bones, lol.
I give it three stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️ it’s right down the middle between good and bad.
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