Wolfman (2025)- Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner Need New Agents
Part of Universal’s classic movie monsters, or now as they lovingly call it “the Dark universe”, is the Wolfman. Obviously, there are folk tales about werewolves predating this monster classic, but once a moon has been howled at, it cannot be unhowled. The howling has taken place. In fact, quite a few movies with wolf people in them have taken place, from the scary, like Dog Soldiers or An American Werewolf In London, to far more tame versions like Jacob in Twilight, or Teen Wolf (the Michael J fox version). Hell, a month before this opened in theatres, there was an actual movie called Werewolves. So, what could Leigh Whannell possibly bring to this reimagining? Nothing.
this follows a man (Christopher Abbott), his wife (Julia Garner),and their daughter (Matilda firth), as they travel into the middle of nowhere after being notified that his father has died. it’s never that simple, and the movie opens with some discussion about seeing wolf men as far back as 1995. God, am i that old? Is 1995 really going back in time? A much more interesting take might have been to show what the film hints at, which is that the indigenous people of America had a different name… and probably that story and that movie would have been way better.
What we get instead is a film that sees our main family trapped in a house together for way too long, slowly watching dad turn, after being scratched by “something”, because no one in any horror movie ever knows what a werewolf, vampire, or zombie is, even if it would be obvious to anyone with basic pop culture or horror film knowledge. I’m interested in these worlds where no media, no authors, no films, no video games, not a single thing has ever imagined a werewolf so someone could guess it. we have to patiently wait for Abbott to change, so he can try and kill his family, but also fight the werewolf that caused all of this. There are five meaningful characters in this thing, and six actors (as Abbott’s character has a younger version of himself in a flashback with his father). So, when I say not much happens, i mean it.
So the fact that the characters are so one dimensional is pathetic. We have so much time to develop Garner’s wife into a dynamic character, but all we really get to know is she’s a journalist, and she thinks her daughter doesn’t love her. Matilda Firth is a fine child actress, she just also is given a really thin role, reduced mostly to reacting to her dad’s tantrums, or pointing out someone said a swear word. Leigh Whannell must not think much of women, because he’d rather drag this son of a bitch out for 100 minutes staring at Christopher Abbott, than he would give these ladies a scene worth their talent. i previously thought Apartment 7A was the worst thing to happen to Julia Garner, who was magnificent on Ozark, but she’s given so little to do here, I would have preferred she just be used as a surprise early death, and set her free to go do better films.
What Leigh did manage to do that worked, was this cool function of Abbott’s transformation, where he can’t understand human language anymore. the audio description does a great job of these point of view moments, where we see things from his perspective, as he can’t hear what is going on, and things start taking on a blue hue. I also enjoyed how it would refer to the distance shots of what clearly is a wolfman, by saying it is shaped like a human, instead of outright labeling it. Even though everyone knows what we signed up for, it indicates that our characters can’t tell either.
It’s frustrating when you have a film at a normal runtime that has such a poor use of screentime that it feels too long. 100 minutes is nothing, but Wolfman makes it feel like an eternity.
Rotten: Final Grade: C-, Audio Description: A-