I’m not calling myself an expert, but I’ll be first in line for any new werewolf story I can get. Werewolves are one of the most wicked vehicles to describe the fear of change, self-acceptance, lust, anything! What I love about them is their stories allow viewers to enjoy multiple perspectives. Some movie-goers look for a more tangible fear through subcontext or relatable base storylines, and others prefer to sniff out a story of raw violence and survival. Either way, there’s a good chance you’ll find something entertaining.
Leigh Whanell’s The Invisible Man was probably the last horror movie we saw in theaters before the world almost ended at the hands of the coronavirus. Funny enough, sickness and questionable disease make up a large portion of Whanell’s latest Universal Monsters rendition, Wolf Man. There are no full moons or silver bullets this time. “Face of the wolf” is the animalistic virus known to the indigenous populations of the rural northwest.
Wolf Man, written and directed by Whannell, stars Christopher Abbott in full dad-mode, working through a strained family dynamic with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). With news of Blake’s father passing, the family takes a trip to his childhood farm in central Oregon to pack up his belongings. Not much closure is awarded to the estranged father-son relationship before getting into some real infectious business.
Historically, the diaspora of werewolf cinema is as vast as U.S. Route 20 is long (which will also lead you straight up to Oregon), which gives plenty of room for creative risk and personal interpretation. A great werewolf story should never be without at least a little tragedy, but as fans roll out of the theater with mixed reviews, it’s clear that we could’ve pumped the brakes on the familial trauma just a bit- we’ve seen that over and over.
Some risks were taken with this movie, just not with the plot or its dialogue, and the real plague is the tacky discourse forced onto a capable cast. However, Abbott’s body acting bleeds through as his unknown disease progresses. He’s an excellent choice for a role that swaps between loveable dad, and damaged being beyond repair. His duality makes his agonizing mutations that much more tragic for everyone- on screen and off.
Conventional but visually gorgeous is a thin wire to sit on, but it’s held together with hauntingly captured countryside scenery. The real weight is pulled by transformation scenes that borrow from the greats of the sub-genre. The bits of practical body horror blessings are what saved me from a trip to the bathroom, and what I believe will save this film from the unforgiving trenches of Film Twitter. Fans of An American Werewolf in London and The Fly will have something pretty to feast their eyes on, I’ll tell you that. I heard mumblings of Cronenberg influences before screening, but I did not expect this level of gore.
The fears of not knowing what’s happening to your body, the body of a loved one, or if they will even survive are exploited in a pretty disgusting (complimentary) way. So much so, that the base conflict of breaking generational trauma, and removing animosity out of marriage doesn’t, and shouldn’t really matter. Just like Blake’s ordeal with his estranged father, we aren’t awarded closure there either- which supports my point; it doesn’t really matter.
Look, the intimate interpersonal themes in The Invisible Man were on point. They complimented any angle you could watch the film from, driven by a monster that exists on a human plane, but we’re playing on different turf now. Werewolves are a threat that exist on the far end of fantasy, so why not give us a more fantastic underlying conflict that aligns more with the anxieties that come with the health of self and loved ones? Clearly, a large amount of thought and effort was put into the passage of the wolf himself, and it paid off. I would’ve preferred to stay in that realm, but to be realwith you, I sat down to witness a wicked wolf, and visually, yes, that goal was met.
Wolf Man is in theaters everywhere Friday, January 17th
