TL;DR – It is a film that starts out like a sprint, but it may have forgotten it was not that kind of race towards the end.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Wolf Man Review –

Well, not that long ago, Universal attempted to re-create a shared universe for all those classical monster films that they still held the rights for, and well, the Dark Universe was so successful that you won’t find it on our Cinematic Universes page. However, in the wake of that, they still had all these monsters lying around, and someone might as well do something with them, which is how we got Leigh Whannell’s fantastic The Invisible Man, a film that lived rent-free in my brain for an age. Well, it is now time to see if lightning can strike twice.   

So, to set the scene, Blake (Zac Chandler) has had an estranged relationship with his father (Sam Jaeger) and the place he grew up in the deep rural forests of Oregon, and he got out as soon as he could. Now living with a Wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth), Blake (Christopher Abbott) has everything he wanted but is still struggling. Much of this comes from the legacy of his father, who went out into the woods one day and never returned. Well, the government has finally declared him dead, so Blake can take his family back to his family home to pack everything up and close that chapter of his life with maybe a quiet stay in the mountains to reconnect everyone. This is the plan right until something furry jumps out on the road in the dark, and the family find themselves perched sideways on some trees with a monster about.    

One thing that Wolf Man absolutely nails is the opening setup, which shows just how dangerous the titular Wolf Man actually is. That moment when you see for just a second in the gun scope or the steam of its breath come behind where the kid is hiding when everyone thinks it is coming from the front. They genuinely sent chills down my spine. Part of that comes from them setting the tone before the title cards rolled with the sounds of trees creaking in the wind, which was at the perfect register to unsettle. You know that opening crash is going to happen. It put front and centre in all the trailers. Even then, the build-up tension before we get to that point was masterful. Lost in the woods, the odd neighbour (Benedict Hardie) that appears out of the dark, the foreboding warnings, the twisty road in the mountains. I knew 100% that scare was coming soon, and yet it still made me jump in my seat in a way that most jump scares never earn.

Wolf Man is at its strongest in the first half of the film, where everyone is in an unfamiliar place, trying to survive a night with something that wants to kill them lurking just out of sight. Every sound, every movement, and every potential egress becomes a danger point. All of this is heightened when we find out that Blake was injured in the crash, but probably not by the glass. So, you then have this feeling that nothing is safe inside or out, and your greatest love could be your greatest downfall. The film plays with expectations and perspective switching around to increase the tension, and it works. Well, it works for the first half, which is why we now need to employ [SPOILERS] moving forward.

The back end of the film is by no means bad; there is just this turning point from the car onwards, where each action starts to bring diminishing returns. Setting your film in one rural location where no one can leave and over one night gives you a lot of opportunities to raise the stakes. It also limits your options of what you can do when you only have a house, barn, and greenhouse to work with. There is also this discord as to who the film wants to focus on, and it is more engaging when Charlotte is at the centre. One of the interesting parts of Leigh Whannell’s recent work is how he recontextualises the things you take for granted and shifts them against you. Unfortunately, there is none of that here. Werewolves become slow-turning zombies, and that can only take you so far. It is a relatively straightforward ending with an inevitable outcome, and that was a bit disappointing, even if the final shot was stunning.   

While the ending did not quite land as well as it could have, the ride there was still intense. Congratulations to the location scouts who found the perfect location, which is both stunning to look at and filled with a bit of dread even in full daylight. The prosthetic work throughout the film is solid and helps ratchet up the tension and danger, even when you get to see it in its full glory, which is where a lot of other films fall down. Also, every sound effect in the movie was perfectly placed in such a way as to make me deeply unsettled. This led to me jumping out of my shoes when a wallaby spooked me while I was putting out the bins later that evening. If the power of cinema is to invade your everyday life, then Wolf Man gets a big tick of approval.     

In the end, do we recommend Wolf Man? While it was not the strongest outing in places, it perfectly managed that tension all the way through. The cast was clearly giving their all, and some genuine jump scares still make me nervous walking through parts of my kitchen at night. Have you watched Wolf Man?, let us know what you thought in the comments below.If you liked Wolf Man, we would recommend to you Upgrade.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Wolf Man
Directed by – Leigh Whannell
Screenplay by – Leigh Whannell & Corbett Tuck
Based on – The Wolf Man by Curt Siodmak
Music by – Benjamin Wallfisch
Cinematography by – Stefan Duscio
Edited by – Andy Canny
Production/Distribution Companies – Blumhouse Productions, Cloak & Co. & Universal Pictures
Starring – Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger, Zac Chandler, Benedict Hardie & Ben Prendergast
Rating – Australia: MA15+; Canada: 14A; Germany: 16; New Zealand: R; United Kingdom: 15; United States: R