Director: Leigh Whannell
Stars: Julia Garner, Christopher Abbott, Benedict Hardie
While Leigh Whannell came up as a preeminent screenwriter and actor with fellow co-conspirator James Wan, his achievements as an emerging director ought not be overlooked, with a strikingly solid run through Insidious Chapter 3 (one of the better sequels in that series – watch out for a baby Jenna Ortega!), the darkly comic Upgrade and the super-successful Universal monster update The Invisible Man. On paper Wolf Man might sound like the studio trying to continue their efforts to soft-relaunch their ill-fated Monsterverse. If that’s the intention, nobody told Whannell, who’s offered up something quite averse to your typical crowd-pleasing pop-horror spectacle. His take on the werewolf tale is dark and dour. A deeply unsubtle movie-length allegory on domestic violence and cross-generational abuse that plays more like a morose regurgitation of David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
The ever-dependable Christopher Abbott is writer and family man Blake Lovell, doing his best to parent young daughter Ginger (Matilda Faith) in a way that breaks a cycle of intimidation he felt in the company of his own dad (Sam Jaeger). When Blake learns that his long-missing father has been certified dead by state officials in Oregon, he urges his family to pay a visit to the old rural homestead, seeking both closure and clarity.
A cold-open set some thirty years earlier suspensefully seeds the trouble to come, as young Blake (Zac Chandler) and his pa hole-up from a growling creature while out in the woods deer hunting. Returning to those same trails, Blake, his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and Ginger find their lives quickly upended when a startling road accident leaves the three of them stranded and under attack… and Blake fatefully scratched by the beast in the darkness.
Unfolding over the course of a long and pensive night, what follows is a pre-ordained transformation that Whannell tries to navigate in an admirably sombre, unpleasant and gloopy manner. It starts with the tired horror movie cliché of the odd loosened tooth. But, aware of popular forebears like An American Werewolf in London, Whannell and his co-scribe Corbett Tuck go for a gradual and pained loss of humanity, in the process evoking a sense that Blake’s suppressed brutality will be inevitably expressed; that a man can’t fully hide from learned (or even innate) behaviours.
This manifests a few neatly presented ideas. The most striking and successful of which is Blake’s loss of language and understanding, presented in single shots that cross an unseen membrane demarking personal space. Visual effects and lighting delineate whose perspective we are within and the audio is alternately garbled to express Blake’s breakdown in communication with Charlotte – an extension of a marital strife already established. Elsewhere, Whannell plays grizzly homage to a giant of French extreme cinema; Marina de Van’s auto-cannibalism hell ride In My Skin. Not the kind of thing casual punters might be expecting at their local multiplex from a Blumhouse title.
Whannell’s perennially dark, pressure-cooker approach is decidedly anti-fun, but there’s something admirable in his commitment to it. As adept as the prosthetic and make-up effects are, however, Wolf Man faces a challenge when it comes to the design elements chosen. As seriously as Whannell wants to play it – treating lycanthropy like a disease rather than a curse – the end results are as likely to elicit laughs as shrieks of horror. Nobody was particularly asking “what if the werewolves from Buffy the Vampire Slayer were a bit bald”. Escaping an inherent primate physiology proves tricky, and Whannell ends up with something akin to a sickly neanderthal, more pitiable than terrifying.
That may indeed be the point. Far flung from the antics of Lon Chaney Jr., what’s presented here is a heightened and compacted vision of a tight-knit family confronting serious illness, palliative care and even the morbid question of assisted suicide. Wolf Man can feel like a speed-run of a long goodbye. It’s a thunderously unsubtle treaty on familial trauma and decidedly masculine responses to abuse. But it’s also a flick book depiction of how chronic illness compels us to grieve for someone disappearing before our eyes. I found myself introspective and moved throughout the film. I thought about my difficult – frankly broken – relationship with my own dad, and I was reminded of losing loved ones to merciless cancers. Whether or not these are the emotions you want to have stirred by a movie called Wolf Man, its a credit to Whannell that he’s able to make us feel and connect, even if elements of his picture don’t land gracefully.
So yes, an odd, sometimes stilted outing, one that leaves itself open to mockery. But I can’t help but respect how committed this movie is to giving everyone – audience included – an incredibly bad time.
And, not for nothing, it’s deeply funny how – after all these years – Whannell can’t resist a sacrificial foot gag. No matter how far we’ve come, we’re still the same people deep down.
The Lost Highway Hotel 