I’m always grateful for my AMC A-List subscription, but there are certain days I’m particularly glad it exists. Every once in a while, I’ll see a movie that was so bad that I’m only thankful I didn’t actually pay for a ticket. This was the first thought that went through my mind after I finished watching “Wolf Man.”
I wouldn’t go so far as to say there are no redeeming qualities in this film whatsoever, but I just did not enjoy my experience watching it at all. And that’s a shame. I didn’t expect it to be anything of intense merit, I know January is the worst month for horror films — it’s historically a “dump month,” the time of year when studios release movies that performed badly in test screenings — and, really, films in general, but I at least hoped I would have some fun with it. But I didn’t. In fact, I really was just very bored most of the time.
For the record, I watched “Wolf Man” a day after I saw “The Brutalist,” and somehow that film, with its three-and-a-half-hour runtime, was more gripping and had better pacing than this one, which stands at only 103 minutes.
But I try to be generous, so it’s worth starting with the — very few — positives. If you’re at all a fan of body horror, there’s some stuff here to appreciate: the gore special effects are actually fairly good, the gross-out factor being maybe the only traditionally “horrific” part of this film. There’s a clear debt to the work of David Cronenberg, particularly “The Fly,” in the way the transformation is portrayed. That being said, it should be made clear from the outset that this is a film about the transformation: the physical act of our main character, Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott), becoming the Wolf Man takes precedence over anything else.
I can’t help but wonder whether a film that focused itself more on the Wolf Man’s actual being would’ve been more interesting. That is, how does a human react to transforming into a wolf (or something like it)? How does one adapt? As the opening epigraph states, it’s supposed to be an ancient disease: “hills fever,” the white locals called it; “face of the wolf,” as it was known to the indigenous tribes of the area.
What this implies is that there is a lot of history here to choose from, a lot of people who’ve succumbed to this disease. There are certainly many more interesting stories to be developed from this fairly simple concept than the cliché of a contemporary man not wanting to become like his father.
And, yes, I understand the allegory Leigh Whannell, the film’s director, is trying to set up. It’s a film that’s supposed to be about generational trauma and fatherhood, but it’s such a tired concept that’s much better served in a million other genres — there’s nothing implicit to the werewolf myth that suits it for this kind of storytelling, it just comes across as diluting any modicum of terror the film tries its hardest to muster up.
Even worse, by the end, it’s apparent that Wannell has little or nothing to say about this theme, there are no lessons or revelations for either the audience or the characters. Ultimately, it’s a fruitless attempt at making the film seem deeper than it really is.
It’s also true that the ability to find the concept of the werewolf scary after the age of maybe 5 or 6 passed a long time ago. There’s nothing particularly frightening or even dreadful about “Wolf Man.” Even the body horror stuff I praised before does little to elevate the film. And, when the film finally does reveal to us the actual design of the Wolf Man, the special effects work seems all for naught. The werewolf, the monster of this monster flick, looks terrible! What should’ve been the project’s strongest point is, in the end, a disappointment, and only solidifies the dullness that pervades the entire runtime.
I haven’t seen either “Upgrade” or “The Invisible Man,” Whannell’s previous two films, so I can’t comment on those in any capacity. They’ve gotten good reviews from critics and audiences though, so I’m willing to give them a chance and give Whannell the benefit of the doubt. He clearly cares about the horror genre and clearly wanted to create something actually meaningful with “Wolf Man.” Unfortunately, as it stands, it’s only one in a long line of predictable, uninteresting productions from Blumhouse that saturate the market every year. And, unfortunately, as it stands, I have nothing more to say about it.
