GoMovieReview Rating: ★★★1/2 
Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Leigh Whannell
Written by: Leigh Whannell and Corbett Tuck
Produced by: Jason Blum p.g.a
Starring: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Sam Jaeger, Matilda Firth, Benedict Hardie, Ben Prendergast, Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly and Milo Cawthorne.
‘It’s my job to protect you.’
There’s a build to Leigh Whannell’s reimagined Wolf Man.
Set in rural Oregan, Blake (Christopher Abbott) is living a farm life with his father.
There’s a, ‘No Trespassing, there’s nothing here worth dying for,’ sign on the gate.
It’s 1995.
At 07:00, father and son go hunting only to find themselves stalked by a creature just out of sight. Only a movement, a glimpse through the crosshairs of a shotgun. A growl.
Hiding, father and son see the condensation of breath rising above a door with scratch marks left as a warning.
It’s a frightening existence, a young boy growing up with a survivalist father communicating with a neighbour via radio about the sighting of the creature seen just out of sight like an apparition.
As soon as he’s old enough, Blake leaves the land to move to the city where 30 years later he lives with his successful journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth).
Currently ‘in between’ jobs, Blake dedicates his life to looking after his daughter.
After his missing father is presumed dead, the house in Oregan is left to Blake.
To try and close the distance growing between husband and wife, Blake convinces Charlotte that going to the farm would help bring the family closer together.
Until a single scratch makes a once loving dad and husband become a monster.
Returning with another universal classic monster character after the success of his previous monster film, ‘The Invisible Man,’ Whannell states, ‘These classic monsters have endured for a reason […] Something about them is just too fascinating, creepy and mysterious to go away.’
There’s a clever device used here, to show the infection taking hold of Blake, with the light focusing on the monster he’s about to become.
He’s dying but doesn’t know it yet.
Words become jumbled but sounds are amplified so even the crawl of spider legs across a wall beat a heavy drum.
Even the perspective of a car accident is at an angle so the audience can feel the characters’ upturned world.
Working with cinematographer Stefan Duscio, the evolution of the infection is shown by adjusting the lighting using different lenses, so Blake’s night vision is seen in contrast to how his family sees the world, sees him, changing.
So the audience can see both sides of the evolution, Whannell stating, ‘One would live in the human world, and one in the animal one.’
The idea of a werewolf remake wasn’t very exciting to me, and the family drama felt heavy handed at times, but I was won over by Whannell’s focus on the evolution of infection rather than a monster baying at a full moon.
Whannell’s signature jump scares, and what I appreciated the most, the perspective of change as the family becomes more terrified of their once loving husband and father makes, Wolf Man worth a watch.
