Wolf Man

Review by Mike Finkelstein

Universal has, for a long while now, been trying to get some new version of their Universal Monsters brand off the ground. You can see the traces of it all the way back in 2004’s Van HelsingAfter two successful Mummy movies, Universal had big plans for a whole monster universe by 2004. The first film to launch it, Van Helsing, also managed to put those ambitions in the dirt for nearly a decade., an abortive follow-up to Universal’s very successful and well-received 1999 The MummyA relaunch of the classic Universal Monster, The Mummy was a surprise smash hit that traded horror for high-fly, Indiana Jones-style adventure.. Where people loved the Brendan Fraiser-led film about an Egyptian priest back from the dead, audiences were far less warm to the monster mash-up of Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein battling Hugh Jackman’s vampire hunter.

And then the hits kept coming. 2010’s The WolfmanA reboot of Universal's classic Wolf Man series, this was pitched as a high budget, artsy film but the results were more of a turgid, uninteresting mess. was supposed to launch a new cinematic universe of monsters. When that film failed, the plan was moved over to 2014’s Dracula UntoldOne of Universal's many attempts to drag their Monsters into a modern, shared universe, this one tried to cast Dracula as a tragic hero, but audiences barely paid attention., with an end-credit sequence promising more monster action. That film was a moderate success, but not to the point that Universal wanted to pursue a follow-up, so instead they shifted gears and planned to launch their Dark UniverseUniversal's attempt at making a shared cinematic universe of anti-hero monsters, which died with little fanfare after the abortive launch of The Mummy in 2017. on the back of the Tom Cruise-led The MummyAn attempted reboot of Universal's Mummy series, which was also supposed to launch the connected Dark Universe. It failed on both counts. in 2017 (assuming that if one Mummy film could be successful, why not another?) and, of course, it failed spectacularly as well. After that, the studio decided that making a shared universe was a terrible idea and they’d pursue one-off films instead.

That plan, so far, is not working out any better for the beleaguered studio and their monster ambitions. While 2020’s The Invisible Man was a solid success, bringing in $144 Mil on a tiny $7 Mil budget, the studio has yet to replicate that Box Office achievement, in no small part because the studio has thrown more money at least interesting projects. 2024’s AbigailA reinvention of Universal's classic monster film Dracula's Daughter, this movie was developed by Radio Silence as part of Universal's attempts at new solo adventures for their horror franchise., while amusingly fun, was an uneven project that flopped with audiences. It at least did better than RenfieldA version of the Universal Dracula story, this time from the perspective of the vampire's put-upon minion, the film worked as a kind of action-comedy, although audiences didn't seem to care upon its release., a film derided by critics and audiences, and while bombed so badly it barely made back a third of its hefty $65 Mil budget. And there was The Last Voyage of the DemeterA different interpretation of the Dracula story, this time focusing on the fated sea journey of the Demeter where, in the novel, all the crew of the ship are quickly dispatched by the vampire., which also bombed in 2023. Universal has yet to find a winning film since The Invisible Man, and with the recently released Wolf Man, it doesn’t seem like that trend is going to change any time soon.

I mention all these previous films because one would assume that a studio, seeing failure after failure, would look at what worked (2020’s The Invisible Man for instance) and see what was successful, what wasn’t, and would try to give audiences what they actually wanted. Wolf Man, though, is just an absolutely spectacular failure. While it does bring back the writer / director of The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannell, so that he can make another reinvention of a classic property, it does so on a much larger budget with a character that possibly doesn’t resonate with audiences. The character of the Wolf Man hasn’t had a successful solo adventure since, well, 1941’s The Wolf ManThe classic Universal Monster film introduced a new take on the werewolf story (after 1935's Werewolf of London) and created a crossover chaarcter for Universal's stable, one that continues to be revisited to this day.. His other adventures were either group crossovers (which struggled under diminishing returns) or abortive reboots. Trying to launch a successful new feature with the creature was already going to be an uphill battle with audiences, but the film as shot and released absolutely does the character no favors.

Credit where it’s due, the problems with the film aren’t evident immediately. The film introduces us to a young Blake Lovell (played as a child by Zac Chandler) who lives with his father, Grady (Sam Jaeger), out in the wilderness of Oregon. His father is a hard man, emotionally abusive, and he expects Blake to be a young, tough man. His father takes him out to hunt one afternoon, and while stalking a deer, Blake spots something else. Something weird. While Grady says it was just a bear, he ends up talking to a friend (over ham radio) about the “thing” out in the woods. It wasn’t just a bear, it was something else. Something more sinister.

Thirty years later, Blake (now played by Christopher Abbott) is married to journalist Charlotte (Julia Garner), and they have a young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). Blake tries to be a caring, doting father to Ginger, even though sometimes he feels a little of his father’s anger bubbling up within him. When Blake gets a letter from lawyers sending him his father’s will, Blake realizes he has to go to Oregon to pack up his father’s things. He convinces Charlotte to go with, agreeing to stay there for the Summer while they tie up loose ends. The couple, though, don't even make it to the cabin before they run into issues, with a strange man on the backwoods road forcing them to swerve and crash. Blake gets claws by some creature during the incident, and by the time the family reaches the cabin he’s already starting to change. Can he retain his humanity, or is Blake going to be a danger to the people he loves?

2025’s Wolf Man sets up interesting plot ideas to carry the film. It has Blake, who grew up emotionally (and maybe physically) abused, trying to be a better father to his daughter than his father was to him. It couples that with Blake and Charlotte having trouble in the marriage, struggling to connect after years together. It’s a kind of character story where, one would assume, the monster at the center of it all would force Blake to confront his inner turmoil, reconnect with Charlotte, and become a better father and husband by the end of it all.

At least, that would be what you’d expect from these plotlines being raised. Wolf Man, though, really doesn’t seem to know how to connect those plot threads to the titular monster. Blake getting attacked by the beast early in the story means that, over time, he eventually evolves into the monster. We see, from his perspective, that he loses the ability to understand and communicate with his wife and child, and this sets a barrier up between them that can’t easily be overcome. I guess one could say this is a metaphor for what’s going on with his relationships, if you’re being kind, but there’s a factor missing from this to make the story connect: Blake doesn’t learn from it.

The lycanthropy (if we can call it that) in this film seems to function like a permanent transformation, a disease that ravages the host and changes them into something else (something, apparently, prone to wandering the woods like a cryptid). Blake can’t change back, so once he becomes a wolf man, he’ll remain a wolf man forever. As such, what is Blake supposed to take away from the transformation that will aid him in his marriage or with his kid? There’s nothing he can learn, nothing that informs his role as husband or father. It honestly would have been better for him to have a happy, loving relationship with his wife and kid because that would factor as much into the storyline as the family struggles he’s having now. It doesn’t really matter at all.

It doesn’t help that, in effect, Charlotte and Ginger are just props in his story. Charlotte has an ill-defined job as a journalist, which allows the film to show she’s too dedicated to her job (writing about topics that are never addressed) before she throws it all away and abandons her job for three months. Like with the struggles in their marriage, Charlotte’s career (which is the only thing we know about her outside the fact she’s married to Blake) has no bearing on the plotline in Oregon and didn’t even need to be mentioned. Meanwhile, sweet as Ginger is, and as nice as it is to see her and Blake have a fairly healthy father-daughter relationship, Ginger doesn’t do anything in the story. She exists as a damsel for Blake to defend when another wolf man shows up. Otherwise, she has no character arc, no character growth, and just stands around.

And this is to say nothing of the fact that the wolf creatures in the film don’t look like wolf men or werewolves at all. While the initial concept art made the creature look like a cross between the Leprechaun and a rat man, the final product wasn’t much better. The “wolf man” in question is just a slightly hairier dude with a couple of fangs and claws. He doesn’t look scary, being too humanoid and too silly. I understand the concept was to make something more grounded and realistic for the story, but what they came up with just looks dumb and not at all like the classic wolf man audiences might have been coming to watch.

But beyond that, it’s still not realistic. The disease ravages Blake in a matter of hours, not just causing him to get sick to the point of feeling like he’s going to die, but also growing out his hair, growing new teeth and claws, adjusting his bones, changing his vision, changing his brain. Sure, maybe a disease could do some of this, but it would take more than a handful of hours to pull all of that off. And since some of these things are outside what a virus could do, we cross right back over into magical infection, so why even bother trying to explain it in a grounded sense. It doesn’t work.

There are parts of the film I at least liked. The acting is solid, even if most of the players don’t have much to do. The special effects, for what we get, are cool, featuring a solid mix of practical and in-camera effects to depict Blake’s transformation. There are a few scenes that are gory and stomach turning, which at least added some amount of thrill to the film. It sits on this weird verge where, with another editing pass or two on the script, and a better concept for the monster, this film might actually have been watchable, if not good.

As it stands, though, the film is just a mess. Boring at times, with character threads that go nowhere and very little that actually gets resolved. The monster is a joke, the scares are few and far between, and in general the film fails to treat the creature, or its story, at all well. This film isn’t a failure like 2010’s The Wolf Man but, quite frankly, it isn’t a better film either. Wolf Man fails differently but does just as poor a job as the last time this sad creature was trotted out.