Starring Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth

Directed by Leigh Whannell

Blumhouse, in cinemas now

When a family at a remote farmhouse is attacked by a mysterious creature, the father begins to transform into something unrecognizable… although the title of the movie might be a clue.

In Blumhouse’s latest body horror, Wolf Man, Film-maker, Leigh Whannell is asking some serious questions. Is toxic masculinity inherent in the frontier mentality of the White American coloniser? Is said toxic masculinity so ingrained that it has passed from generation to generation still infecting society to this very day? What will it take to break this suffocating chain of toxic masculinity? And, of course, most importantly…

…what’s it actually like to turn into a giant dog?

Counterintuitively, it’s in answering this last somewhat bathetic question where Wolf Man is simultaneously at its most, and least, effective.

There’s not a lot to say about the story, such as it is. In fact there isn’t enough story. The movie starts well, with some nicely played set-ups. In 1995, deep in the Oregon woods, young Blake is warned by his controlling father of the dangers of Deathcap mushrooms. Hmmm – the viewer strokes their metaphorical beard – that will surely come in handy later. Lovell (Sam Jaeger) clearly loves his son, but seems only to express this through snappy, dog-like anger. Hmmm, again. A hiker has gone missing afflicted by a disease the indigenous peoples call ‘Face of the Wolf’. A third ‘Hmmm’ is required.

Thirty years later, for decidedly tenuous reasons, adult Blake (Christopher Abbott) takes his family back to his missing-presumed-dead father’s spooky cabin for a long vacation, but before they’ve even get there, they stop for a bite… so to speak.

And then…?

Well, surely the single most memorable moment in the whole canon of lycanthropic movie making is the transformation in John Landis’s 1981 classic, An American Werewolf in London. I can still remember the jaw dropping pleasure at the sight of David Naughton contorted in agony undergoing Rick Baker’s brilliantly rendered effects as the hapless American chappie turned into a far from pedigree chum. Scary, funny, and rhythmically perfect in the way it was cut together.

The problem with this latest iteration of the werewolf story is that Whannell takes well over an hour to do what Landis and Baker achieved in less than three minutes. Whannell wants us to understand what turning into a wolf is really like. And to be fair, the first moment where we see the world from Blake’s increasingly doggy perspective is an emotionally arresting one… but then this motif is repeated ad nauseum to no good effect. It’s frustrating, because there’s are some decent ideas lurking in what becomes an increasingly turgid affair.

Dragging out Blake’s transformation to more than half of the movie’s runtime effectively stops the storytelling in its (paw) tracks. Each time the film seems to be picking up pace, it slows down again, as wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner, looking permanently bemused) reevaluates the marital relationship for a few minutes.

So, what of the Deathcap mushrooms and Blake’s Dad? Obviously I wouldn’t win a lot of friends by spoiling the movie, but I think it’s okay to reveal that the lethal mushrooms never get another mention, and the resolution with Blake’s father, such as it is, is completely wasted. The film’s climax truly is a case of the dog that doesn’t bark, although some of the biting is satisfyingly gruesome.

Review: Wolf Man has its moments – but they are too drawn out and lacking in wit to make this a truly engaging or frightening film. On the plus side, child actor Matilda Firth, as Blake’s daughter Ginger, lights up the screen and is a name to watch. 5/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com