Woeful Wolf Man

0 stars

I wish I’d seen Wolf Man in the theater. It’s just not as much fun laughing at a film this cheesy when you’re all alone in front of the TV at home.

It’s a shame this film was so bad because director Leigh Whannell did a great job bringing an updated version of The Invisible Man to the big screen in 2020. This time, he can’t find the handle to make this classic horror story his own.

As someone who has watched many Werewolf pictures over the years, including classics like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, I always approach a new one with one essential criterion: how good the transformation scene is. I still remember what happens to the various monsters in The Howling, especially that final shot of Dee Wallace as her lycanthropy kicks in on live TV. Rick Baker won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Makeup for making David Naughton transform bit by bit before our eyes in An American Werewolf in London. Even a less ambitious effort can make an otherwise forgettable film worth watching, such as the otherwise forgettable The Wolfman from 2010 with both Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins going through the change.

The transformation scenes in Wolf Man are forgettable, not to mention incomplete; maybe that’s why the title divides the creature into Wolf and Man. The lead actor never looks like a world, or any other kind of believable fur-covered creature. He seems more like a burn victim. 

While the monster part of the movie falls flat in terms of giving us a monster, it’s nowhere near as disappointing as the drama that Whannell and co-screenwriter Corbett Tuck use to flesh out the rest of the movie. When the dad tries to explain to his daughter why he’s being borderline abusive, for example, he tells her, “Sometimes when you’re a daddy, you’re so scared of your kids getting scars that you become the thing that scars them”. 

Yikes.

And while even the most talented performer would have trouble making a line like that sound anything but incredibly creepy, Christopher Abbott’s dour delivery makes it creepy and unintentionally hilarious. The actor’s inability to give the audience anything but that same dismal dad does more to spoil the film’s energy than anything else, with the possible exception of Julia Garner’s wide-eyed and vacant reaction to everything around her. 

So with all that working against it, how can watching this Wolf Man make you laugh? Here’s an example:  While driving into the forest to a remote cabin, the family finds a creepy neighbor to show them the way. Before you can say overworked cliche, the van they are driving suddenly starts careening down the road before running off the world and crashing into a tree. Not just into the tree, but actually up in the tree. Forget the physical impossibility of the act; it’s downright ludicrous to look at.

There’s always a fine line watching a movie this bad, where it either becomes so bad it’s good, or at least watchable, and so bad it’s just bad. Wolf Man is just bad.