Wolf Man is not a conventional werewolf movie. It is not An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, or the recent Werewolves. Rather than going for the usual fun-scary vibe, director/co-writer Leigh Wannell (The Invisible Man) goes in a different direction altogether. This is the saddest werewolf movie I’ve ever seen, and I mean that as a compliment.
An extended prologue introduces us to Blake Lovell, a young boy whose overly stern father Grady (Sam Jaeger) teaches him how to survive in the woods. As an adult, Blake (Christopher Abbott) gets word that Grady, from whom he’s been long estranged, has died. He needs to pack up all the stuff in his dad’s house, so he heads into the Oregon wilderness with wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). On the way, they’re attacked by a mysterious creature. It scratches Blake, who then begins undergoing a terrifying transformation.
The important thing here is not the creature, it’s Grady. He instilled in Blake a firm belief that a father’s duty is to ensure his family’s safety. That lesson is taken to heart when the creature starts stalking the clan. Blake works to keep Charlotte and Ginger out of harm’s way, a task that becomes harder the more he changes. Thematically, Wolf Man is very much about how the guy determined to protect his wife and child becomes the thing they need to be protected from. That’s a tragic concept, as is the concurrent theme about parental fear of messing up your kids.
Whannell focuses on those ideas, giving his movie a melancholic tone. In a smart move, the werewolves don’t look completely wolf-like. They maintain human features, which are accentuated with lycanthropic touches. That allows us to remember that Blake is very much a human being on the inside, and that the instinct to hunt his own wife and daughter is way worse than developing fangs or growing hair in weird places. Christopher Abbott is excellent in his role, even when buried under latex. The actor keeps emotion in his eyes, guaranteeing we feel his character’s pain at all times.
None of this is to say that Wolf Man is without thrills. The film certainly has them, especially in the final half hour. Several good shocks come during that time, one of which made this devout horror buff squirm. (It involves a bear trap.) Fresh spins are put on old conventions, too, like the car that won’t start when people are trying to escape. Because the visceral tension serves the story’s core ideas, it carries weight beyond the norm.
A minor frustration is the excessively dark cinematography that occasionally makes it difficult to see what’s going on. Also, more could have been done early on to establish the troubles in the Blake/Charlotte marriage to give the finale even greater meaning than it already has. Wolf Man still makes an impact. With Abbott and Garner expertly grounding the horror in something real, this becomes a werewolf movie that might just get you a little choked up by the time its magnificent final shot arrives.
out of four
Wolf Man is rated R for bloody violent content, grisy images, and some language. The running time is 1 hour and 43 minutes.
© 2025 Mike McGranaghan