Review: WOLF MAN

Blake has survived his childhood with a survivalist father in the wilderness to be a freelance writer with wife and daughter. When he receives government certification of his father's death despite the body not being found, he has an idea. Going out there and staying at the farm might help him get some closure on the relationship that been so alienating. He persuades his career journalist wife it might also be good for the family as a bonding experience. So, off they go, into the wilds of Oregon and get lost. Happily, an old childhood acquaintance is there to help but this doesn't end well. Soon, the family are hurrying to the old farmhouse, pursued by something savage and large. Blake's wound begins to trouble him more than being painful. He begins to see the world through very different eyes.

Leigh Whannel's follow up to The Invisible Man shows him tackling another distant relative from the old Universal horror stable. This time, instead of cleverly removing the veil of subtext to the theme (Invisible Man's domestic abuse) Whannell plants the family unit a little under the surface as the monster story takes front and centre place. He avoids repetition by confining most of the action to a single night as Blake succumbs to the infection and metamorphoses into the wolf. His draining ability to communicate with his wife and child being the dysfunctional family theme to the fore but never at the expense of the threat.

Christopher Abbott again displays a great capacity for believable pathos as Blake. Parts of his transformation where he understands he can no longer talk are quietly heartrending and echo the sadness of his husband and father trying to keep a family from collapsing. Julia Garner as his wife Charlotte must tread deftly between showing her contempt of her husband without us giving up on her. Matilda Firth is natural as young Ginger. 

The remaining character is less the werewolf than the wilderness whose lightless confinement is brought close to our eyes. The barely visible treeline is all threat. The sight of the condensed breath shimmering over the edge of the lookout shelter seen in the prologue and later, at crisis point, is a Spielbergian touch that proves very effective in consolidating the powers of the monster.

This one has got some lukewarm reviewing around the traps but I was constantly engaged by the human threads and alerted by the action. While Whannell's Upgrade and Invisible Man provided a lot of tech bravado and ticked the boxes and beyond, Wolf Man is kept to its tasks and boundaries and presented something effective and manageable. That sounds like faint praise but, really, it's a sigh of relief that more wasn't made of what is always a simple tale that delivers a clear tragedy.