'Wolf Man' Reimagines a Classic Monster
by EG
Director Leigh Whannell got critical acclaim for his 2018 re-make of the classic horror movie The Invisible Man. Fans have been hoping that Whannell would follow up that movie with a sequel, but instead, he's worked on a re-tooling of another old-school monster story. His new release, Wolf Man, is that reboot. Read on for details.
It’s been an agonizing five-year wait for Leigh Whannell’s follow-up to his near-universally acclaimed The Invisible Man.
The Elisabeth Moss-led sci-fi thriller was the last hit movie before Covid forever altered the entertainment industry and world alike, having grossed nearly $140 million against a $7 million budget. Whannell’s victory lap may have been cut short as the U.S. population retreated inside during his film’s third week of release, but between The Invisible Man and his 2018 cult gem Upgrade, the Australian native officially reinvented himself as a must-see genre specialist, shedding his long-established identity as “one of the Saw guys” and “one half of Wan/Whannell.”
As the pandemic became more and more prolonged, Whannell and his co-writer/wife Corbett Tuck decided to channel their collectively challenging experience into Wolf Man, which is now another modern reimagining of a classic Universal monster à la The Invisible Man. The horror film chronicles Blake (Christopher Abbott), Charlotte (Julia Garner) and Ginger (Matilda Firth) Lovell’s temporary relocation to Blake’s abandoned childhood farm in the Oregon boonies for the sake of reconnecting with one another.
But before their moving truck could safely arrive at the Lovell property, the family is attacked by a creature with human and animal characteristics. During the ruckus, Blake is gashed by the beast, beginning his accelerated transformation and degeneration into a Wolf Man. The film has a number of key themes, but Blake’s sudden fast-acting disease is meant to resemble the helpless feeling of watching a loved one disintegrate before our very eyes.
“I had a close personal friend who died of ALS. It was a long journey that she had with it, and it was a slow-motion nightmare. This all took place over many years, and it was tragic and horrific,” Whannell tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So I wanted people to draw the connection between what Blake’s going through and [real-world] disease.”
Whannell’s fourth directorial outing begins during Blake’s childhood in 1995, as his survivalist father (Sam Jaeger) raises him in soldierly fashion. This section of the film also once contained a scene that introduced Blake’s ALS-stricken mother. The character was meant to be a nod to the friend that the Whannell family lost, while creating an early parallel to the affliction that Blake suffers upon his return home in 2025.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.