Review: This 'Wolf Man' Lacks Nards

Leigh Whannell's second attempt to reinvent a classic Universal monster is a strained and inorganic attempt to recapture the magic of 'Invisible Man'.

Review - Wolf Man (2025)
105 minutes
rated R for “bloody violent content, grisly images and some language”
Directed by Leigh Whannell
Produced by Jason Blum
Written by Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck
Starring Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner and Matilfa Firth
Edited by Andy Canny
Music by Benjamin Wallfisch
A Blumhouse Productions production
Opening theatrically the week of January 17 courtesy of Universal Pictures

The good news is that, on its face, Wolf Man continues the best “change” from Universal’s prior attempts to turn its classic monsters brand into an ongoing franchise. Unlike The Mummy, Dracula Untold, or the woefully misguided Renfield (which felt like a project left over from the “turn them into superheroes” Dark Universe), this incarnation mimics Invisible Man by crafting a scenario that pits sympathetic protagonists *against* the title character. Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man was a spectacular offering that A) positioned its marquee monster as a full-on baddie and B) updated its story to provide a potent commentary on gender-specific gaslighting while being just a banger of a thriller. However, directed and co-written by Whannell (alongside Corbett Tuck), this next iteration feels like a strained attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle.

A token amount of plot - After years of being merely a missing person, Blake Lovell’s father (portrayed in a protracted prologue by Sam Jaeger) has finally been declared dead. This leads to the unemployed writer (Christopher Abbott) being tasked with traveling to Oregon to gather his dad’s belongings. He essentially guilt-trips his journalist spouse (Julia Garner) into joining this extended road trip/summer “getaway” as a means to step away from work and reconnect with each other and their young daughter (Matilda Firth). However, bad directions, a friendly stranger and one near-miss on a desolate stretch of backwoods road leave our core trio in mortal peril as someone… something seems to want to murder them. Meanwhile, the wound Blake sustained in the initial attack appears to be a bit more than a flesh wound.

Wolf Man was greenlit via a pitch from Derek Cianfrance, with Ryan Gosling attached to star. They dropped out in 2023, and this version feels like Whannell pitched in to save those already employed in the film. To use everyone’s favorite SAT question, Leigh Whannell is to Wolf Man as Peter Jackson is to the Hobbit prequels. Technical polish and visual invention notwithstanding, it’s shockingly claustrophobic, even by Blumhouse standards. I must presume that the $25 million budget, compared to the $7 million Invisible Man, is primarily for development costs. More problematic is that it positions itself as a commentary on toxic masculinity and emasculation, but A) it feels written with a yellow highlighter and B) it never makes the onscreen events feel like an organic consequence of Blake’s stereotypically masculine flaws.

Things get off to a bad start when, after that prologue, which feels like the curtain raiser for a bad Sony franchise starter, the film frames Blake briefly yelling at his daughter for endangering herself amid a busy city street as frowned-upon behavior. Every parent is different, but the one time I wouldn’t feel bad about yelling at my kids is if they were engaging in behavior that might harm themselves or others. We then get introductory moments where Blake is framed as the comparatively more feminine parent regarding his childcare responsibilities and his “talk about our feelings” sentiments. However, these sequences are comically on the nose and don’t factor into what seems to be a genuine marital rift between two loving parents. Moreover, it doesn’t factor into what comes next.

In an interesting change in formula, Blake’s werewolf transformation plays out in a manner more befitting a zombie bite. Considering the established gender dynamics, there was a potential for a supernaturally skewed riff on Straw Dogs where Blake’s subsumed less-fashionable he-man masculinity becomes both essential for protection and inevitably perilous to those he loves (something-something-The Searchers-something-something). However, the picture doesn’t play around with its themes or do much of anything beyond slow-walking to the inevitable with a bare minimum of actual werewolf action. Granted, formula is formula, but Whannell’s Invisible Man worked partially because it found ways to pivot ahead of schedule and off the beaten path. The grim inevitability, furthered by a minor (and unsurprising) third-act reveal, undercuts any attempt to position the film’s plotting as anything resembling cause and effect or even karmic tragedy.

There is cinematic polish, most notably in how Blake begins to view his surroundings as his body decays and the acting is as good as expected. However, like too many constrained and lower-budget chillers (how this cost $25 million, compared to the $7 million Invisible Man, I can only speculate), the tension and terror are limited because there are no extraneous characters who might be in real jeopardy. Not helping is the screenplay, which (personal pet peeve) writes the daughter as much younger than her apparent age in terms of not understanding or comprehending what’s happening or why. There are a few solid fright moments, but the picture seems scared of committing to werewolf imagery. Consequently, the action mostly unspools via quick cuts, tight shots and abstract blurs. And as far as topicality, the enticement and perils of conventional masculinity were more astutely critiqued in Whannell’s Upgrade.

I don’t know how much this Wolf Man resembles the initial Cianfrance/Gosling pitch. However, what we got feels like a studio reacting to a shockingly good crowdpleaser and demanding that the “formula” be applied to every other film in that respective brand, complete with the same writer/director, no less. That’s unfortunate since I was hoping that one key lesson from Invisible Man was the extent to which different “monsters” required different kinds of movies that told different stories. However, beyond a failure to justify its themes or make much sense as an of-the-moment story, Wolf Man is constrained and small in scope and ambition. It lacks even a macabre playfulness and is afraid to do anything unexpected regarding subject matter and narrative. There’s plenty of gore, but it never draws blood.