One of the canniest recent decisions by a major studio saw Universal apparently shuffle from the disastrous Dark Universe horror series – officially launched with that awful Tom Cruise take on The Mummy – to far cheaper stand-alone projects made by Blumhouse Productions. The new team’s Wolf Man, acknowledged successor to Universal’s 1941 film The Wolf Man, is not quite the equal of their fabulous The Invisible Man, from 2020, but this is a lean, emotionally satisfying shocker that honours the great tradition while finding new ways of turning the stomach.
We begin with a prologue in which young Blake is hunting in the Oregon wilderness with his aggressive dad. Somewhere in the woods they encounter a sinister, hairy humanoid with a taste for lurking just out of clear vision. Decades later, in San Francisco, Blake (now Christopher Abbott) is doing everything possible to be nicer to his daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth), than his dad was to him.
Meanwhile, Charlotte (Julia Garner), the girl’s mother, frets that she is not taking on her share of parenting. Chance for reinvention comes when Blake’s dad, missing for some time, is confirmed dead and the younger man inherits the dark, rickety structure in an isolated corner of the wilderness. Just the sort of place you’d seek solace in a film called Wolf Man. Right?
Anyway, after some early unpleasantness, they find themselves barricaded indoors while the shaggy beast circles just outside. It soon becomes apparent that Blake is infected with the lycanthropic condition and may soon reclassify his family as dinner.
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Wolf Man does have its share of murky, violent action. As events progress, the werewolf within becomes engaged in a standoff with the werewolf without. But the film is most remarkable for its focus on Blake’s experiences as his body gets taken over by lupine influences. His sense of smell heightens. Vision alters dramatically. His understanding of human speech falters.
There is a conscious move away from the dramatic, effects-heavy transformations that characterised the 1941 film and later treatments such as An American Werewolf in London. The risky focus that Leigh Whannell, the film’s director, puts on the psychological over the physical may alienate some gorehounds, but it makes for an original shocker with subtexts that linger.
Next up, Blumhouse are putting The Mummy the way of the Irish director Lee Cronin. On the evidence so far, we can’t wait.
In cinemas from Friday, January 17th
