The film “Wolf Man”, written and directed by Leigh Whannel, is the second installment in this director’s series of re-invented Universal monsters. This series of movies began in 2020 with “The Invisible Man”, a film that modernized the story of the classic monster by making it a paranoia-filled thriller. After the success of this movie, Whannel took his shot at adapting the classic story of the Wolfman for modern audiences.

When it comes to actually adapting this story, Whannel takes a really interesting approach. The original story follows a man who is dealing with the guilt of transforming into a Wolf by night and killing innocent people, while simultaneously trying to find a way to break himself free from this curse. This movie, however, takes some creative liberties to make this story more contained and familial. The story focuses on Blake Lovell, a father and husband, and his gradual transformation into a wolf over just one night. The writing specifically for his character and his relationship with his daughter is fantastic and does an excellent job of showing their bond in just a short chunk of the movie. This adds some interesting layers to this story and focuses less on the guilt of losing control and killing people, and more on the gradual loss of a father and generational family trauma. While this takes away from some of the original story’s cornerstones, it allows for some cool emotional beats throughout. This movie plays a lot with themes of inadvertent abuse and trauma that can sometimes be passed down by parents to their children, which makes for a fresh new take on the story of the man who turns into a wolf. 

Given that this story takes place throughout only one night, there are a lot of issues with pacing. The tension in this movie is a little lessened to me because of the bounce between the threat on the outside of the house and the transformation happening on the inside. If this movie were to have taken place over a longer period of time, there could have been a more gradual transition between the two, allowing for the tension to build more upon itself. This all could have come down to how the movie was edited as well, as it’s a relatively short film that could’ve benefited from an extra 10-15 minutes.

A lot of the horror in this movie is body horror, meaning that most of the scares come from seeing this horrifying transition from man to animal. This is all done very well, and seemingly mostly practical. There were a lot of moments when my theater was audibly disgusted by something happening on screen, and it added to the fear of this wolf-like creature. The actual design of the Wolfman, while scary, didn’t quite resemble a Werewolf, and I wish it had leaned more into an homage to that classic design.

While this movie was an interesting take on this classic monster and an overall entertaining time, it fell short of Whannel’s previous installment: The Invisible Man. With that said, I would give this movie a 3 out of 5. If you’re a fan of horror (especially body horror) and the original Universal Monsters, I think you will have fun with this movie, but as a casual horror fan, I don’t think it’s a necessary theater watch.