Every new year presents the opportunity for new beginnings — the opportunity for people to correct the mishaps of the year prior and build their new self. From a film standpoint, the new year means a slurry of new horror releases all throughout the year. Released in theaters on Jan. 17, Leigh Whannel’s “Wolf Man,” a modern interpretation on the classic werewolf story, is just the sort of horror film to begin the year with.
After his success with “The Invisible Man” — a modernized twist on the classic monster movie — Whannel garnered much acclaim for his nuanced and realistic depiction of what a modern-day invisible man could look like. Touching on themes of abuse and trauma, the extreme success of this film has lofty expectations for Whannel’s next horror release.
Following Blake (Christopher Abbott), his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and their child Ginger (Matilda Firth), “Wolf Man” tells the story of a couple attempting to reconcile their marital and parental shortcomings by taking a trip to the Oregon countryside. Grieving the recent loss of Blake’s father, the family travels back to stay at Blake’s childhood home. Upon their arrival, they are quickly attacked by a local beast who infects Blake with a body-altering disease that quickly endangers the livelihood of his family through the long night.
Whannel loves to interject relatable themes within his films so that the audience can become emotionally invested in its protagonists; “Wolf Man” is no different. “Wolf Man,” uses the transformation from man to werewolf as an allegory for generational trauma passed through the patriarchy. In Blake’s case, it illustrates how some boys grow up to be the very monsters that they had feared in their youth, inflicting the same damage they feared to their own families.
The film begins with a traumatic hunting sequence between Blake and his father where they encounter the local, mystic werewolf that his father became obsessed with. This introduction illustrates how long this fatherly relationship troubled Blake, represented by a 30-year jump to the present, where his trauma is still unresolved.
Interestingly, the film welds traditional tropes with new imaginings. The werewolf transformation within “Wolf Man” is altered from the “on a full moon night” sequence to the concept of a viral infection consuming the protagonist. In Blake’s transformation from struggling father to violent monster, the film pays homage to well-known body horror staples, such as David Cronenberg’s 1986 film “The Fly” or John Carpenter’s 1982 film “The Thing.”
This body-horror influence was an intriguing aspect of the film but disappointing overall since it never fully commits itself to getting as freaky and nasty as eager fans hoped it to be.
The comparison between becoming a werewolf and traumatic fatherly relationships becomes eye-rollingly blatant at the point where the beast who attacked Blake is revealed to be Blake’s father all along. While Blake’s father is supposed to be a figurative representation of parents being their children’s greatest monsters — he legitimately transforms into one — and terrorizes Blake after his supposed death. This portrayal is akin to how parents, long after they are gone, continue to haunt their children.
As relatable as this allegory may be, “Wolf Man” lacks trust in its audience to pick up the themes for themselves without needing to be spoon-fed answers, almost insulting the audience’s intellect at times. The film is entrenched with questionable decisions made by its protagonists. It never decides to subtly convey its motif of generational trauma, nor the complicated drama between Blake, his family and his father, through nuanced dialogue in its characters or visuals. Which never allows the audience to feel the gravity of their dilemmas in the way Whannel insists that they do.
Verdict: “Wolf Man” offers something new for werewolf fans to digest with its modernized and humanistic depiction of man-turned-wild. Unfortunately, that is about as much as the film offers, as avid horror fans may wish they were challenged with more to maul over by the time the credits end.
