Having changed production hands and casting numerous times one might assume ‘Wolf Man’ is a picture that is somewhat cursed. So is the result an alpha dog, or a howler in need of a silver bullet?
Having made a fantastic job of revitalising Universal’s plans to leverage their monster heritage with 2020’s ‘The Invisible Man’, it would make sense that the studio would again approach Australian director Leigh Whannell to potentially bring the same magic touch to this oft-delayed Wolf Man origin tale.
That great fictional agent of chaos Tyler Durden once observed “Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?” The question ‘Wolf Man’ posits, perhaps a little more on the snout though arguably no less profound, is “What does it mean if our fathers try to eat us?”
There are only so many ways you can hope to shed light on a topic so well worn as the inherently violent nature of man, but I always appreciate a movie that’s willing to take a bold swing at an oft-trodden topic. By most metrics it’s hard to argue that ‘Wolf Man’ is anything other than a miss, but fair play to director Leigh Whannell for stepping up to the plate; he clearly understands that if you’re going to tell a story in which a guy turns into a dog and gnaws his own rotting flesh then you may as well take an occasional pop at the bleachers.
Christopher Abbott is Blake, an unemployed writer living in San Francisco with his journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner), and their young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). Blake learns that his father, Grady, who went missing some years ago out in the woodlands of Oregon, has now been declared legally dead, and so Charlotte suggests the family make a pilgrimage to Blake’s childhood home in order to clear out Grady’s belongings while making peace with the past. Suffice to say it isn’t long before things take a violent, supernatural turn.
We’ve already had a hint of what’s waiting in the woods through a well-executed opening flashback sequence, wherein a young Blake and his decidedly alpha dad are out hunting and encounter a menacing presence. Aside from being quite an effective little vignette in its own right, this sequence goes some way to explaining Blake’s insecurities in light of his father’s macho posturing. The unfortunate thing about it is that the movie struggles to regain much of this sense of tension throughout the rest of the runtime, and bizarrely it’s never mentioned by the older Blake when that same presence begins threatening his family.
There are parts of ‘Wolf Man’ that I like quite a bit. You just can’t beat the vast, foreboding woodlands of the Pacific Northwest when it comes to evoking a sense of dread, and the location is put to good use here. Working once again with his regular cinematographer Stefan Duscio, Whannell conjures up some fresh trademark inventive visual language cues that do a great job of guiding the audience through Blake’s inevitable transition toward something other than human.
Take for example the numerous sequences where the camera shifts from the audience perspective to Blake’s, accompanied by a distorting of both visuals and audio, increasing in intensity as the animal part of him takes over. There’s also a great bit of audio design in another, earlier sequence where an intruder upstairs is nothing like we expected it to be, first signalling Blake’s predicament. It’s thoughtful approaches like these which hint at what the film could have been if this level of creativity were more widely employed.
Uneven application of its creative textures aside, the thing which works least for me in ‘Wolf Man’ is the casting, and it’s here that I feel the movie really falls down. With material like this it’s especially important that a protagonist be engaging and charismatic, and I’m afraid Christopher Abbott just isn’t that guy. His oddly detached presence served well for his role in Brandon Cronenberg’s waking nightmare ‘Possessor’ a few years back, but here a palpable lack of range leaves me with an uphill battle in sympathising with Blake’s predicament. Crucially, Blake’s relationships with his wife and daughter Ginger, upon the latter of which the entire emotional element of the movie ought to pivot, just isn’t believable. And what a waste of the amazing Julia Garner the role of Charlotte is; clearly the superior actor yet relegated to second fiddle with little to no input of consequence. An absolute crime.
There’s enough of substance to make ‘Wolf Man’ worth a watch, so I’m not going to suggest that anyone with an interest avoidance it completely, but I’m also not going to recommend you plan your weekend around it. Having come onboard the project later in the day I think Whannell has done a decent enough job, but when we consider what he achieved with ‘The Invisible Man’ and 2018’s ‘Upgrade’ before it it’s hard not to feel let down by what’s on offer here.
Author: Ewan, Chester Store
