Films for Breakfast

Years ago, in the leadup to the release of 2017’s The Mummy starring Tom Cruise, Universal Pictures announced an ambitious plan to launch a cinematic universe simply titled Dark Universe. These plans were in motion prior to the first film’s release, although at the time, it was unclear if 2014’s Dracula Untold would actually be canon to the upcoming universe. However, after The Mummy completely flopped both financially and critically, Universal quickly swept plans for its Dark Universe under the rug and left the Universal Monsters idle for another few years; until Leigh Whannell decided to take a crack at The Invisible Man – which was a hit with critics and audiences alike, but most importantly to Universal, made a whopping $144.5 million worldwide off a sheer $7 million budget. It quickly became apparent that the Blumhouse model of smaller budgets/large returns would work gangbusters with the Universal Monster properties.

I preface with this history lesson to simply state how dire of a state these characters were in a few years ago, and how Leigh Whannell is one of their saviors. When Whannell signed on for Wolf Man, it felt like a pretty obvious match – The Invisible Man worked as an allegory for domestic abuse but also kept in tone of the inherent creepiness and creative possibilities that the character has to offer. The Wolfman is inherently a property that features a man succumbing to his darkest urges against his will and transforming into something unrecognizable, all the while affecting those around him. And for better or worse, Whannell once again gives his own spin on this and strays even further from the original material.

In this iteration of Wolf Man, the film follows Blake (Christopher Abbott), a father and husband from San Francisco, who inherits his late father’s home in rural Oregon. After realizing that his relationship with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) is in a tough spot and that his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) is catching on, he decides to take a break from city life and take his family to his childhood home. But if you’ve seen basically any horror film ever, you know that despite the most noble of intentions, usually arriving to a rural farmhouse at night never bodes well for anyone involved. The family is attacked by an unseen animal, and as they barricade themselves in the home, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable.

On paper, this has a lot in common with Whannell’s The Invisible Man remake – it has a talented cast, does quite a bit with a limited budget, and mixes in thrills with a deeper story about trauma and abuse. However, I think Wolf Man is unfortunately a much weaker film than The Invisible Man for many reasons – the first of which can be boiled down to the emotional core of each film. Both films open in a similar way, putting you front in center in the main character’s traumatic event that sparks the rest of the film – the problem is, Wolf Man‘s starting point is so unbelievably less compelling and poorly executed than the former’s. The entire film hinges on the belief that you buy into Blake as a character and how he is fighting to not become his father, but every moment the film tries to convey this it simply isn’t effective.

There’s a moment very early in the film where Blake yells at his daughter for almost falling into traffic then finds himself apologizing to her for snapping, afraid he may have stepped out of line like his father used to. On paper, this is a great stepping off point – in execution, it feels poorly handled due to awkward performances and staging. While I wouldn’t say Abbott or anyone else involved is quite bad in the film, I also don’t think the film itself nor the performances ever quite recover from the shaky grounds it starts on. The entire film hinges on an emotional core than never feels sufficiently explored, and thus, all the moments of thrills and terror feel less exciting in comparison – I just didn’t care about anything that was happening, because I did not feel invested in the situation.

Another big gripe I have with Wolf Man is simply the pacing. I have no problem at all with slow burns – in fact, I actually love when a horror film has the audacity to take its time and truly become unnerving and get under the audiences’ skin. But in the case of Wolf Man, it simply hammers home the transition phase of the character for far too long – something that should not take nearly an hour worth of screentime in your 100-minute film to get across. While there are some effective moments due to impressive practical effects and makeup, I just found this section of the film to be a complete slog and dead weight to an experience that already started off rough.

By the time the film actually gets into the grit of the Wolf Man, between the action and terror… it just feels so dry. Which is shocking to me because, and I hate to continually bring up Whannell’s The Invisible Man – but he truly did a fantastic job with that one and made that character a thousand times scarier and more brutal than I could’ve ever imagined he would be. As I previously stated, there are some effective gory and body horror elements here, but outside of that, any moments where the Wolf Man is actively being himself feels entirely void of any genuine excitement or terror. It also doesn’t help that the film is so darkly lit that you can’t even appreciate what is happening – all of the outdoor sequences are genuinely a chore to try and make out what is even happening on screen. This feels like a creative choice rather than a mistake, but man, is it a bad one.

By the end, the film tries to hammer home a message and loop in an allegory you know its trying to slyly play from the moment it begins. Instead of becoming an effective statement on the consequences of generational trauma and abuse, it simply feels thematically undercooked and void of any real thrills. Leigh Whannell two or three well directed sequences here and there, and it does generally feel like the cast is trying to make this into something special – but it unfortunately just succumbs to its many flaws and is never quite able to overcome the rocky foundation it starts on. While not the biggest disaster to hit the Universal Monsters catalog, it does feel like a massive missed opportunity for all involved.