Wolf Man Review: This Dog’s Missing Its Bite

Leigh Whannell has been around the block with his few horror outings in recent years. Beginning his horror streak by directing the third entry in the Insidious franchise, Whannell would then go on to bring to life the delightful little action film Upgrade, followed shortly thereafter with his radical new take on The Invisible Man. Following in the footsteps of the latter, Leigh decided to bring his style to another Universal Monster in Wolf Man. Considering that The Invisible Man walked away with critical acclaim for the reinvention of the horror icon, can Whannell’s new take on lycanthropy do the same?

Our creature feature begins with the patriarch of the family Blake, played here by Christopher Abbott, recollecting days spent with his strict father in the Oregon wilderness. Cue thirty years later as Blake now has a wife and daughter, played by Julia Garner and Matilda Firth respectively, and is struggling with both his roles as a husband and as a provider. Out of work and dealing with marital problems, Blake receives word that his father has been declared deceased and is inheriting his childhood home. While Blake sees this as a fresh start, a certain encounter with a lycanthrope is one that throws quite the horrific monkey wrench into his plans for family time.

Unfortunately, Wolf Man is absolutely mired with issues, making it a far cry from what made Invisible Man work so well. To start, the analogies used by Leigh here are fast and furious, delivering impacts with the subtlety and force of a runaway Mack truck. The overall idea of incorporating the classic Universal Monster into a story surrounding generational trauma and disease are strong enough concepts on paper, but said ideas never quite coalesce here. The problem is that this breezy affair never gives these concepts the time to breathe and percolate, allowing viewers to dig their teeth into them.

Let me give you an example of this: as 2025’s Wolf Man follows in the footsteps of its predecessors by seeing Blake become said Wolf Man, thanks to receiving a debilitating scratch on his arm. There are glimpses of brilliance in Blake’s transformation here and there, whether it be from how his new sense of hearing emerges or how the transformation itself makes it feel as though Blake is literally being dragged into a different world from those around him. These ideas fall to the wayside in a by-the-numbers affair that simply never makes good on what could have been. On the character front, Blake’s relationship with his father, for example, is given the briefest of scenes to kick things off, creating something of a boilerplate for the main character’s personality in the present day. Everything feels infuriatingly surface-level in Wolf Man when it could have been so much more.

While watching Wolf Man, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was footage that had been left on the cutting room floor and that major scenes had fallen to the wayside to keep it at a lean and mean ninety minutes, and the movie suffers for that. While not necessarily related to its overall length, I couldn’t help but think about how much the film would have benefitted from taking place over the course of a week rather than all in the timeframe of one night. Witnessing Blake’s terrifying change, his decomposition in some instances, would have been that much more effective if they were a slow burn rather than a spectacular flare-out. There are full scenes where I found myself scratching my head due to the sheer lack of complexity in any of them, which could work, but it simply doesn’t with Wolf Man. We go from Point A to Point B to Point C with little to no insightful deviations from the road set forth.

One aspect of the marketing for Wolf Man is the hiding of what the creature of the night looks like (or in this case, creature of both night and day as the lycanthrope can operate in the daylight here). Many horror fans received their first reveal via a sneak peek at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights and it’s unfortunate to say that the film’s iteration doesn’t feel like that much of an upgrade. Whannell makes the decision to lean heavier into Lon Chaney Jr.’s design with some modern twists to play up into the new take, which ultimately falls short in delivering a scarier take on the classic creature. Blake’s lycanthrope design is clearly attempting to pull off a balancing act between a terrifying visage while exuding an emotional core but much like the overall story elements, it fails to take off.

Wolf Man is about as straightforward as you can get, missing out on many of the elements that made Whannell’s past works so effective. There are so many instances of what could have worked but fall short here, creating a horror film that doesn’t feel scary enough and certainly isn’t able to hammer home whatever messaging it was hoping to convey. Wolf Man is a colossal misfire and I feel disheartened in saying that.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Wolf Man lands in theaters on January 17th.