WOLF MAN. Almost five years ago now, the new plague looming as the presumptive worst thing that could happen in the next however-long — were we ever so innocent? — the release of writer-director Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man prompted me to both lament the rather dismal roll-out of Universal’s ostensible monster series reboot (The Mummy, 2017) and to celebrate the possibilities suggested by its transition to the more modest, generally sturdier Blumhouse imprint.
That was an occasion to nostalgize and bloviate, but the heart of the matter was the surprising success of Whannell’s adaptation. Not that his work was to be questioned, but the abject failure of a bigger studio’s attempt at modernizing a classic was so profound as to make the whole enterprise seem more than a little dubious. But his execution of The Invisible Man, with its prescient topicality and, most especially, realignment of the narrative with the “victim” (Elisabeth Moss) at the center of the frame, made for a modest, ingenious twist on a classic that could only have boded well for things to come. And then the world went into its death spasms, and we didn’t hear much about this particular brand of monster for quite some time.
Until, that is, trailers for Wolf Man began circulating, another rehash of a rehash of a rehash, potentially salvaged (again) by Blumhouse and Whannell. It was and is a tricky proposition, filmic werewolf mythology being both dustier than a mummy and, as a corollary, maybe even dearer or at least more familiar. I have explored the cinema lycanthropy less than most of the other classical monsters, but that does not mean I (like so many) am not well-versed in its traits and tropes. And so, even without a dog in the fight, I was prepared both to embrace and judge Whannell’s version of things.
That version promising, at least from the initial advertising, to be an economical, more folklore-based tale of a family bedeviled by a father in inter-species crisis, set among the already shiver-inducing environs of rural-most Oregon. And that it is, quite successfully at times; so why do I feel conflicted?
What Wolf Man gets right, at least in the early going, is to foreground a family struggling to remain connected against its supernatural events. Blake (Christoper Abbott), a writer “between jobs,” whom we meet as an adolescent in a somewhat stilted, unnecessarily expository opening flashback, is married to busy journalist Charlotte (Julia Garner). They are parents to Ginger (Matilda Firth), about the age of Blake when we first meet him. As a benefit of his unemployment, Blake is able to spend more time with Ginger than does Charlotte, a source of some distance between the couple. So, when he receives notification that his estranged father has been declared dead (after how long, we can’t be sure), Blake suggests the family decamp to his childhood home to take a break, reconnect and set the house in order.
It’s not an unnatural or unexpected impulse, but this rather precipitous transition is the beginning of our narrative troubles. One jump cut and the family is lost in the woods of central Oregon in a moving truck nobody seems at all comfortable with. A couple of wrong turns later and — no spoiler, it’s in the trailer — they’ve crashed into a ravine, are forced to extricate themselves from a truck suspended on its side and are then faced with the prospect of a raging infection claiming Blake’s humanity.
The all-in-one-night fight for survival and any sort of understanding works theoretically and, in flashes, practically. Whannell and director of photography Stefan Duscio devise clever ways of using available light to ramp up the suspense, as well as a neat in-camera trick to transition between the points of view of Charlotte, Ginger and the transitioning Blake. But in dispensing with all the exposition in the first few scenes, the remainder of the story becomes a not-quite-harried enough series of flights and pursuits, with the family running from farmhouse to barn to pick-up and back again without a continuous enough sense of threat.
The creature effects are compelling and grotesque, although I think the creators tried too hard in restraining themselves and, in so doing, fall just short of making a truly memorable new monster. And then there’s the business of how much humanity remains within the wolf and some unanswered questions about origin and durability.
There’s much to appreciate here, particularly in the attempt to do something different from both existing werewolf movie myths and from The Invisible Man, but here the intent seems obscure and disconnected from the scenes as they play out on screen. Perhaps the most grievous missed opportunity is Garner’s relative paucity of material with which to truly work. She is one of the most fascinating, focused and compelling American actors of her day, but Wolf Man insists on making her a final girl without the clever quips. R. 103M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in Sanctuary in the Storm.