WOLF MAN (2025) - A Dog of the Year Candidate
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 12:03 am
4/10
When Leigh Wannell modernized “The Invisible Man,” he produced a moderate hit for Universal, which had been stung by expensive franchise non-starters “The Mummy” and “Van Helsing,” two failed efforts to resurrect the studio’s classic monsters for a new generation. With producer Jason Blum once again behind him, Wannell now turns to another beloved monster – the Wolf Man – for a busted, depressing remake that should’ve been more accurately called “Hillbilly Zombie.”
Light on thrills and suspense, but heavy on sadness, fractured relationships – and punctuated by some of the lamest creature design ever seen in a movie of this kind – Wannell’s WOLF MAN at least starts off promisingly enough. Off in the woods of Oregon, a father and son run into some kind of upright creature while they’re off deer hunting – decades later, the now-grown son (Christopher Abbott) returns with his workaholic wife (Julia Garner) and their young daughter (Matilda Firth) to the same, isolated ancestral home of his youth. Alas, they’re attacked en route by something resembling the same creature, with Abbott scratched and soon turning into an animal-like beast, while the other creature is out there lurking about, all of it causing terror for his understandably concerned wife and daughter.
At some point this “Wolf Man” was supposed to star Ryan Gosling but one wonders what kind of “scheduling conflict” eventually befell him en route to (wisely) dropping out of the project. Perhaps it was a failure to find a decent screenplay for a movie which essentially chucks all of the classic Wolfman mythology out the window – you can forget about any fanciful back story for the werewolf curse, wild gypsies running about or even the Wolfman having the ability to shapeshift whenever a full moon isn’t around. Once you get attacked, you’re here turned into some weird looking, Dr. Moreau-created beast with no hope of coming back – at least, that’s the best I can say for the picture’s hideously unappealing make-up and creature effects that nearly look like your friend’s pathetic attempt to go all Lon Chaney, Jr. back in the ‘70s without the means to pull off the look.
Stripped of all of those interesting elements that define the character as more than just a violent killer, this “Wolf Man” is a remarkably thin movie that has nowhere to go but down, and its stiflingly downbeat trajectory makes the whole enterprise a predictable, tiresome affair. Almost nothing turns out to be compelling here – not Abbott’s transformation, not Garner’s move from an urban workaholic to a resourceful mom, and certainly not the poorly staged and executed set-pieces. There’s no life to this movie at all, and since the picture abandons not just its genre heritage but any hope of adding twists or turns involving its “backwoods curse” – which turns out to be more a disease than anything else – there’s nothing to latch onto as this dreary slog rolls towards its preordained ending.
The lack of supporting players also forces Wannell to rely entirely on his three leads, and it’s a losing struggle despite the actors trying hard. Abbott manages to establish a rapport with the girl but there’s not much chemistry happening between him and Garner, who seems to be straining here to play a straight role without the “colorful” elements of her personality that have informed her past performances. You also never buy her recapturing her feelings for her husband as he undergoes a transformation that almost seems to be echoing David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” but comes off falling far short of that mark – just as it does even the troubled but superior 2010 “Wolfman” Universal rolled out with Benicio Del Toro that, at least, looked the part and adhered much closer to the character’s roots.
This is a howler of the wrong kind, a concept misguided from the get-go that proves there’s no breaking the curse of bad moviemaking.
When Leigh Wannell modernized “The Invisible Man,” he produced a moderate hit for Universal, which had been stung by expensive franchise non-starters “The Mummy” and “Van Helsing,” two failed efforts to resurrect the studio’s classic monsters for a new generation. With producer Jason Blum once again behind him, Wannell now turns to another beloved monster – the Wolf Man – for a busted, depressing remake that should’ve been more accurately called “Hillbilly Zombie.”
Light on thrills and suspense, but heavy on sadness, fractured relationships – and punctuated by some of the lamest creature design ever seen in a movie of this kind – Wannell’s WOLF MAN at least starts off promisingly enough. Off in the woods of Oregon, a father and son run into some kind of upright creature while they’re off deer hunting – decades later, the now-grown son (Christopher Abbott) returns with his workaholic wife (Julia Garner) and their young daughter (Matilda Firth) to the same, isolated ancestral home of his youth. Alas, they’re attacked en route by something resembling the same creature, with Abbott scratched and soon turning into an animal-like beast, while the other creature is out there lurking about, all of it causing terror for his understandably concerned wife and daughter.
At some point this “Wolf Man” was supposed to star Ryan Gosling but one wonders what kind of “scheduling conflict” eventually befell him en route to (wisely) dropping out of the project. Perhaps it was a failure to find a decent screenplay for a movie which essentially chucks all of the classic Wolfman mythology out the window – you can forget about any fanciful back story for the werewolf curse, wild gypsies running about or even the Wolfman having the ability to shapeshift whenever a full moon isn’t around. Once you get attacked, you’re here turned into some weird looking, Dr. Moreau-created beast with no hope of coming back – at least, that’s the best I can say for the picture’s hideously unappealing make-up and creature effects that nearly look like your friend’s pathetic attempt to go all Lon Chaney, Jr. back in the ‘70s without the means to pull off the look.
Stripped of all of those interesting elements that define the character as more than just a violent killer, this “Wolf Man” is a remarkably thin movie that has nowhere to go but down, and its stiflingly downbeat trajectory makes the whole enterprise a predictable, tiresome affair. Almost nothing turns out to be compelling here – not Abbott’s transformation, not Garner’s move from an urban workaholic to a resourceful mom, and certainly not the poorly staged and executed set-pieces. There’s no life to this movie at all, and since the picture abandons not just its genre heritage but any hope of adding twists or turns involving its “backwoods curse” – which turns out to be more a disease than anything else – there’s nothing to latch onto as this dreary slog rolls towards its preordained ending.
The lack of supporting players also forces Wannell to rely entirely on his three leads, and it’s a losing struggle despite the actors trying hard. Abbott manages to establish a rapport with the girl but there’s not much chemistry happening between him and Garner, who seems to be straining here to play a straight role without the “colorful” elements of her personality that have informed her past performances. You also never buy her recapturing her feelings for her husband as he undergoes a transformation that almost seems to be echoing David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” but comes off falling far short of that mark – just as it does even the troubled but superior 2010 “Wolfman” Universal rolled out with Benicio Del Toro that, at least, looked the part and adhered much closer to the character’s roots.
This is a howler of the wrong kind, a concept misguided from the get-go that proves there’s no breaking the curse of bad moviemaking.