In 2019, director Leigh Whannell was known to fans of horror cinema for his numerous collaborations with his sidekick James Wan then for a feature film at the crossroads of an episode of Black Mirror and an actioner from Scott Adkins, Upgrade. During a meeting with Universal, he was asked what he would do with a classic character like The Invisible Man. His improvised pitch then allowed him to hit the jackpot and make a film which had the saving effect of definitively sinking the Dark Universe, an attempt to marvelize the Universal Monsters, and to renew the genre with an approach that was as entertaining as it was politically relevant.
Strengthened by the warm welcome given to Invisible Manthe studio decides that it must continue on the same path and offer new versions, all personal and original, of the studio’s famous monsters; the next one to come will be the werewolf. After many adventures behind the scenes and the comings and goings of directors and stars including Ryan Gosling and Derek Cianfrance, it was finally Leigh Whannell who also got involved. He co-wrote the screenplay with his partner and collaborator Corbett Tuck, for a new, intimate and personal rereading of the figure of the lycanthrope.
The result is, to my great displeasure, far from being as successful asInvisible Mannot without being devoid of undeniable qualities and a singular vision of the mythology summoned. Leigh Whannell’s cinema is often linked to family heritage and the parents’ desire to break the cycle of turmoil (for this see the saga Insidioushis best example), and this is what he sets out to explore here. The first two shots of the film announce precisely this intimacy, this proximity of the story: first with a macroscopic shot which shows a wasp confronting numerous smaller but more valiant ants, and then an aerial shot of a clearing with a house filmed like a miniature.
This forest introduction is the best part of the film. We discover the child protagonist and his complicated relationship with his hunter father; he is a dreamer and sees poetry in the tree branches, while his father sees danger. Their first encounter with the wolf is immediate, even if we never actually see it. Whannell plays off-camera with quite remarkable mastery here, notably by condemning the viewer on several occasions to observe with the help of a sniper – which certainly reveals a lot but conceals just as much.
This introduction serves as a decoder for the rest of the story, which takes place thirty years later: the child has become an adult and dad in turn does not want to become his father. He panics when he sees himself shouting at his daughter at the idea of repeating what he experienced, a situation that is unfortunately not particularly clear since the father-son relationship at the beginning is little explored and also the situation where he raises his voice is …Pretty understandable. Me too, if my daughter started balancing on the side of an avenue full of cars and she didn’t listen to me, I don’t think I would stay super calm.
The other element that is not explored enough is the third character: the mother. Early in the scenario, she explains to us (without showing it, it comes through dialogue) that she does not have a close relationship with her daughter, unlike her husband. An interesting idea which is unfortunately little used in the rest of the film, which therefore takes place in the father’s childhood home, in the clearing. His father has died and he convinces his little family to come and spend vacation there, thinking that the great outdoors would solve their problems. No, since they are attacked by the werewolf upon their arrival, the father is scratched and falls ill.
I’m being harsh here in my writing, but the first half of Wolf Man holds up very well. Whannell’s direction knows how to create fear and tension, and we understand his point. As soon as his main character falls ill and begins to transform, he becomes even more interesting and plays here with a camera movement signifying a switch from one point of view to another. This shift allows us to explore the transformation into a werewolf as an illness, Whannell having originally thought of the project as a parallel with Covid.
An approach that is certainly interesting but which will displease fans of werewolf films (me) who were expecting more from the visual side, since here the creature is treated in its design as very un-animal. We are more on a sort of quasi-realistic degenerative disease, but which still uses certain visual and thematic ideas iconic to the werewolf; the in-between leaves one wanting more and gives the impression that the film is cannibalizing itself, as the hero does in one of the best passages of the film.
-After an hour and forty hours, the events go a little in circles and Whannell struggles to take advantage of his arena with the mastery that we know from him on Upgrade and on Invisible Man. Without ever being really bad, Wolf Man therefore disappointing because it has a lot of ammunition and does not often hit the mark enough. The whole thing is never unpleasant, but we expected more from the guy… The final image of the film in particular would have much more impact if the film really dealt with its subject of father-son transmission head-on. Where Invisible Man spoke brilliantly about the violence of men, it’s as if here he forgot to talk about it before arriving at his conclusion.
Ah and nothing to see but a final thought for fans of Game of Thrones : Did the episode of the Battle of Winterfell traumatize you with its unwatchable scenes in the indiscernible darkness on your televisions? And well see Wolf Man in the cinema before it comes out on video, because even in theaters there are moments where we see rieeeennnnn it’s madness.
Wolf Mana film by Leigh Whannell, in theaters January 15, 2025.
About The Author
Captain Jim
When he is not writing articles that no one reads on Cinématraque, Captain Jim teaches cinema, writes scripts for cartoons and cinema, and plays.
He wants to launch a range of Lubitsch t-shirts based on slogans like “Lubitsch please”.
