Leigh Whannell’s “Wolf Man” is Pinnacle Mediocrity – Review
- Colton Gomez
- Jan 27
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 4
Review
By Colton Gomez | 01/26/25 | 8:30 P.M. Mountain Time
Horror, Fantasy | Rated R | 1 hr 43 min | "Wolf Man" Release Date: January 17, 2025
Leigh Whannell’s “Wolf Man” is just about as middle-of-the-road as you can get. There’s nothing exceptional about this movie. It is neither awful nor particularly good. It has some moments of intrigue and suspense but is not special or inventive. As a January release, it’s what you might expect in terms of quality. If you expect to see a good movie that will leave you satisfied, you might feel disappointed. If you watch this movie after deciding you have nothing better to do, then I think you’ll find your time wasn’t wasted.
Blake (Christopher Abbot) is a writer/stay-at-home-dad who cares for his child, Ginger (Matilda Firth). His wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), is a busy journalist who brings home the bacon but not a lot of patience for her family. Blake takes his family from the bustling city to a remote farm in Oregon to collect his recently deceased father’s belongings. Along the way, they are attacked by a strange creature. This encounter leaves Blake experiencing a strange sickness which slowly transforms him into something that rivals the creature out there with the potential to hurt his family.
Composer Benjamin Wallfisch ("It" franchise, "Alien: Romulus") is flexing his muscles a bit too hard here. The music feels too complex for this simple story. It wants to engage is in a serious and thoughtful conversation but there is nothing truly deep enough to warrant this multi-layered music. It’s a beautiful score but feels mismatched for the movie. In this way, it calls attention to itself and doesn’t do the film any favors.
The performances are nothing to write home about. They serve the story and that’s all they needed to do. Abbot, Garner, and Firth play bland characters with no real personalities. There’s nothing interesting about them as they are all reduced to their familial roles: Working wife, stay-at-home-dad, daughter. I don’t necessarily blame the actors for their forgettable performances because the script doesn’t really give them anything to work with.
Whannell’s camera style of fast whips to move with characters in action sequences feels very out of place here. It worked very well in “Upgrade,” where the character is figuring out his new body at the same time as the audience. Here, it seems to be a default choice for lack of invention. (He just had to throw in the “Saw” trap reference too, didn’t he?) He’s running on fumes here and might soon find himself trapped in a hyper-niche of genetically modified humans that he won’t be able to escape; lest he makes a dramatic change.
I don’t know why Whannell wanted to make this movie. He’s just going through the motions of movie-making without putting any thought into it. With this classic intellectual property, he really doesn’t do anything special or different with it. It’s among the most forgettable movies in recent memory. For a monster movie, the only danger here is falling asleep. His attempts at updating it for modern audiences don’t land—like a one-sided high-five.
The most interesting thing about this movie and where all of its strengths lie are in the slow realization of Blake becoming a wolf man (spoiler?). Blake slowly develops nuanced sensory powers which we are privy to experiencing with him. He sniffs out some meat. He hears things that nobody else does. He sees more vividly and clearly than his family. That’s where the intrigue lies and where the most audience involvement can happen. Questions arise there: When will he snap? Can he fight it? What happens next?
The script is interesting in parts but much of it is unremarkable. It’s a fairly surface level story with easy themes and didn’t lean in too hard to them. Namely, it’s about generational trauma and how protecting your kids from monsters can make them see you as one. There are sprinkles of good moments, like one scene where Blake talks to his family but neither his daughter nor his wife react to what he’s saying. This plays like his wife and daughter are ignoring him but they actually can’t understand him. We view this scene from Blake’s perspective, so it seems like a domestic bump in which the family can’t or won’t communicate.
This makeup will not win any awards. It looks kind of cheesy, actually. This is the quality of makeup that would be in a short film as a proof-of-concept rather than the final product. It looks like Halloween masks and fangs were all they had for the transformation. This really isn’t a terrible film but by no means is it a good one, either. Your experience with this film will hinge entirely on your expectations of it. Don’t expect much.
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Review by Colton Gomez
Colton Gomez earned his BA in Film Studies from Weber State University. He owns and operates ColtonGomez.com. Here, he covers new releases in theaters and on streaming. For short versions of his reviews, check out his LetterBoxd
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