The New Movie of the Week: Wolf Man

In the mid-1990s, a hiker that vanished in the remote mountains of Oregon creates an urban legend about a virus linked to the region’s wildlife, but the indigenous people refer to it as “the face of the wolf”.  While hunting around their property Blake Lovell and his father Grady (Sam Jaeger) are nearly attacked by a creature, Grady believes it to be the hiker and is obsessed with the legend.  Although the two survived the attack, Grady wants to go back after it.  Thirty years later, Blake has moved away from home and now lives in San Francisco with his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner) and his daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). Blake is estranged from his father who has also been missing for years and is finally pronounced legally dead.  With their marriage on the rocks, the couple decide to take Ginger to the Oregon wilderness to clean out Grady’s house.  On the way there, Blake gets lost and runs into an old friend, Derek (Benedict Hardie) who attempts to lead them to the Lovell farm, but things don’t go well and an attack before reaching the house leaves Blake with a scratch from a creature on his arm.  The family make it to the house and begin barricading themselves in, but it soon becomes clear that Blake is no longer himself and he begins to devolve as his family is helpless to stop it.  The rest of the story is a look at Blakes’ transformation as he attempts to fend off attacks from the original creature that attacked them.

Wolf Man is a 2025 American horror film meant as a reboot of The Wolf Man franchise.  It was directed by Leigh Whannell from a screenplay he co-wrote with Corbett Tuck.  It was produced by Blumhouse Productions.  The film is getting mixed reviews with rotten Tomatoes giving it a score of 5.6/10 with the website’s consensus reading, “Director Leigh Whannell’s attempt at bringing a fresh psychological dimension to the Wolf Man comes at the expense of proper scares, although fans of body horror will still find some tasty morsels to chew on.”. Metacritic has it at 50/100 based on 49 critics.   The best way to describe the critical response would be to say “mixed”, with most reviewers citing some good atmospheric elements and performances but lacking emotional depth and scares that would be needed to elevate it to the next level.

I am very partial to the original The Wolf Man from 1941 and although I did not care as much for the 2010 reboot, it at least tried to pay appropriate homage to the source material.  Where the 2025 version has no connection and does nothing to pull in the basic story elements that should be included. No mention of the full moon, no wolfsbane, no silver.  In addition to that, I found this a “feel bad” movie leaving me sad and not in a profound cathartic way.  In the original, Larry Talbot is a likeable character, and the story is a tragedy, but it didn’t feel quite as sad as this film.  Blake is trying to be everything to his daughter that his own father was not to him.  His father was gruff and stern with the ultimate goal of making sure his son was strong and resourceful enough to survive anything, but in doing this, Grady pushes him away.  Blake’s interaction with both Ginger and Charlotte have a tenderness to it and it is clear that he loves them both, even with things not being great between him and his spouse.  Ginger adores hm and Charlotte holds a deep love for her husband as well.  So, as the story unfolds it becomes more and more unsettling with a profound sadness as the only outcome for the situation begins to be realized.  The general make-up effects, although slightly hinting at wolf-like appearances, were not impressive and there was nothing in the transformation scenes that we haven’t seen before.  The movie also depends far too much on gore, which I don’t think was needed and detracted from any emotional response it intended to have.  There were aspects of the film that I did enjoy.  I liked how they showed what each character was seeing and hearing from their point of view and the film really did set a great atmosphere both visually and audibly.  I might have liked the film more if it had been called something else and was not intended as a reboot of the classic film, but even then, I would have just left the theatre feeling sad.