Directed By Leigh Whannell

Starring – Julia Garner, Christopher Abbott, Sam Jaeger

The Plot – A family at a remote farmhouse is attacked by an unseen animal, but as the night stretches on, the father (Abbott) begins to transform into something unrecognizable, leaving his wife (Garner) and daughter (Matilda Firth) in a dangerous path of devastation.

Rated R for bloody violent content, grisly images and some adult language.

Wolf Man | Official Trailer

POSITIVES

It comes with great regret that Universal Studios have all but canned their monsters cinematic universe, as between “The Invisible Man” and “Wolf Man”, they’ve seemingly found a unique way to appraise originality in value to a contemporary showcase, all the while tying compelling links between monster transformations to those of psychological conflicts, which grounds these movies towards feeling very humanistic for a change. This time around, ‘Wolf Man’s’ script utilizes generational familial trauma to unearth something otherworldly and physically unrecognizable to those surrounding the captor, and while the exploration of this psychosis leaves slightly more to be desired in the extension of its execution, I love that Whannell took several big swings towards tying such a tragically relatable link to the depths of the movie’s conflict, which in turn summoned some somberly stinging moments of sentimentality that so many of the original Universal Monster films attained in digging deeper beneath the gruff exteriors and social commentary surrounding their various beastly antagonists. As to where previous films made this condition feel an expansion of powerful capabilities, Whannell makes them feel like a gut-wrenching plague that is quite literally sucking the life out of him, with a corresponding visual likeness cooking up some effective make-up and prosthetics work, with just enough C.G impact without smothering, to convey the overtaking struggle of what feels quite literally like it is eating him up inside. Whannell’s technique behind the lens also appraises strong originality in front of it, in order to give audiences an immersive connection to Abbott’s wolf, which has some artistically flashy ways of representing the disconnect between human and animalistic beings. The cinematography from Stefan Duscio initially feels too darkly compromising to interpret the complete picture, but Duscio uses darkness as a means of uncomfortable vulnerability in the surrounding ambiguity of predicaments for its characters, and as a result summons these Amberly light sequences showing an advantageous circumstance from the wolf, who sees in the dark, when his prey can’t see him. Because we’re seeing things in the same way this transformed father does, we receive a greater sense of the terrifying realities of him unable to define the newfound ways that he sees the surrounding setting, all the while articulating these glowing eyes from his opposition in characters that makes this feel like a paranoid fever dream, where those he loves looks like demons plotting their moves to kill him. Likewise, the sound schemes within the mixing are my single favorite aspect of the movie, and the one that ultimately served as the single most defining trait to the isolation factor for both the wolf and his prey when they lose their communicative link of dialogue. Not only does the mixing jumble the clarity of what this father is hearing as he sinks deeper into the depths of his own personal despair, but also an enriched sense of rhythmic chatter between environmental elements like crawling spiders or human running that ate away at his conscience like nagging persistence that would drive anyone crazy, serving as the single biggest ingredient to both his helpless situation and slipping psychological status that attains so much urgency to a film that is otherwise a slow-burn. Lastly, while the characters are nothing to write home about, the performances from Julia Garner and Christopher Abbott certainly are, with the greatest feats of emotional strength from the former coming during the greatest physical feats of the latter. Garner proves that she combines vulnerability and fright as good as any actress in the game today, with so much astonishment and horrifying realizations in the air of her various deliveries of her facial acting, and while her job is to react to the devastating circumstances of watching her family being ripped apart over one fateful night of opportunistic impulse, Garner makes the most of it with tenderness and trepidation that forces her to take control of a situation that her character can’t even properly define. As for Abbott, the mystique of his ability as an actor to always maintain an air of ambiguity to the backstories of so many complex characters is only surpassed by his unflinching commitment to portraying a wolf that never sacrifices his humanity. If commanded wrong, Abbott’s portrayal could easily come across as unintentionally comical, but instead the melancholy from trauma within permeates throughout his grotesque stature, allowing us to never lose sight of the victim from within who unfortunately comes to be defined by the events of his past that haunt him, all the while putting him and his career back on track, after the humiliating circumstance that was last year’s “Kraven the Hunter”.

NEGATIVES

Because there are so many original and compelling touches within this incarnation of “Wolf Man”, I find it disappointing at the end of the day that it’s merely mediocre, as a result of nagging hinderances that its elevated second half couldn’t properly shake, primarily with a surface level script that refused to dig deeper on both its characters and its aforementioned psychological trauma. Call it an unfortunate aspect of being relegated to 92 minutes of screen time, but I think the bigger issue is that the script constantly feels like a series of stacked set-ups, with very few moments of nuanced or downtime development in between to expand upon those initially orchestrated aspects during the opening act, like Garner’s lack of connection with her daughter, or Abbott’s fatherly relationship, with the latter transitioned so abruptly to make it feel like a vital aspect was intentionally left out for later. None of these elements to the script’s integrity essentially go anywhere, so there’s an unforeseen divide and lack of connection with the characters that ultimately kept me from fully investing to a single one of them, despite their ongoing plights, made worse by so many dumb and illogical decisions along the way that surmised no shortage of conveniences to set the motions of the plot in development in ways that I never believed or even remotely empathized with. On top of this, the fright factor for the movie is a bit bland and inconsequential, especially as the film’s second half ties itself more to the familial link surmising sentimentality that did result in some truly touching scenes of compassion. Whannell definitely crafts suspense and tension to scenes so atmospherically cloaked in dread and ominousness, but the pay-offs never materialize towards anything meaningful in ways that summon scares from the expectations of a paying audience, leaving this as what I can only interpret as Whannell’s single least impressive direction to date, as a result of his most impressive capabilities falling bland between periodic jump scares and abrupt resolutions, which massacre the urgency of so many bleak and overwhelming situations. Because Abbott’s character constantly maintains awareness to who and what his wife and daughter are, their lives never feel in the kind of peril that makes each situation feel truly terrifying, and as a result the movie’s blandness feels most detectable under the air of its palpable frights, which never came close to physically or emotionally moving me. Finally, I was refreshingly most surprised that 90% of this film’s events take place under one night, as it’s a faithful callback to the aforementioned classic monster movies persisting under a full moon, however the device here never amounts to the kind of urgency or unpredictability that made so many of those movies bona fide classics, and between on-the-nose dialogue that completely eviscerated the subtleties within its psychological prowess for generational trauma, and a predictably obvious and abrupt resolution that summoned a final shot that I predicted as early as the film’s fifteen minute mark, it made the climax of this movie fall so flat during its most defining moments, leaving it limping to a finish line that should’ve involved a fully-fledged transformation, but instead hinged on the ages old idea that love will save us all, to which I audibly groaned at.

OVERALL
“Wolf Man” takes a freshly ferocious bite of originality in ways that practically reinvent the monster formula for an entirely new generation but ultimately finds its greatest struggle in committing to characters and thematic impulses that leave it flailing in shallowly subliminal waters. While the performances enabling humanity to otherwise forgettable characters are vital to the integrity of the picture, it’s ultimately Whannell and his production’s unflinching fearlessness towards conjuring consciousness into the never-ending nightmare of his nightcrawler that is most defining, cementing a flawed and frenzied feast that howls just loud enough to leave a lasting impression.

My Grade: 6.7 or C