Directed by Leigh Whannell.
This is the first horror film in 2025 that you can safely skip. To be clear, it’s a good-looking production with a great soundtrack, but Wolf Man is one of the poorest excuses for a werewolf you’ll ever lay your eyes on.
More frustrating than a werewolf that really looks like someone on a sweaty five-day meth-bender, is the fact that the film is largely void of dialogue and an actual plot.
Wolf Man, drawing near-to-nothing from the 1941 original, follows a well-to-do writer, Blake (Christopher Abbott), and his journalist wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), in their seemingly all-too-perfect San Francisco digs.
Blake receives a letter informing him that his survivalist father has died, and he now has the deed to their remote central Oregon cabin. For the record, central Oregon looks nothing like the scenery in which the audience is presented. The movie is apparently shot with a composite of Ireland and New Zealand.
Blake decides to drag the family for a remote respite to — ahem — central Oregon. Upon arrival, Blake crashes their moving van and gets bitten by a WEREWOLF! Cue the transformation. Really, that’s it. That’s the entire film. It all takes place over the course of a single night, and Blake becomes a werewolf. He’s less of a werewolf and more of a zombie. Awkwardly, the movie expects the audience to swallow this mediocre hairball of a werewolf.
The remaining hour of the film is Blake chasing his wife Julie and their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) around the house while also contending with the werewolf that bit him and turned him into a werewolf. Does Blake learn the origin of the werewolf that bit him? Indeed, he does. This element of the film, along with some tepid acting along the way, becomes one of the more frustrating and cloying plot pieces that Wolf Man has to offer.
Again, Wolf Man looks and sounds fantastic. However, there are so many cliched pieces and parts, unusual responses from the protagonists, dumb choices, and incomplete plot devices that the film results in a boring night at the cinema.
Should you see Wolf Man?
Nope. Nada. Zero. The film is a hairy abomination. Considering how great Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man was, this film is a disappointing follow-up to the Universal Monster canon. Gone are the pentagrams, the gypsies, the gothic castles, and weirdly, gone is the MOON! How do you have a werewolf film with no appearance by the moon?
There’s no question that Leigh Whannell has some exceptional horror chops and he does turn in a beautiful looking film, but his interpretation of lycanthrope lore and the original source material is frustratingly dull and will have you howling for a refund. Do yourself a favor and go rent the 1941 original, or take a gander of 1971’s Werewolves on Wheels. Trust us, you’ll be better off.
Wolf Man is rated R and is in theaters everywhere.