Well, Wolf Man, I’ll Bite

There’s not much out there right now, and I normally reserve horror flicks for October, but I had to see this rebooted Wolf Man for one reason and one reason only: Leigh Whannell. 

This is the director who pleasantly shocked me with another reboot in The Invisible Man in 2020. Whannell has a knack for tricking the eye into staying on a focal point while jolting in an image so unexpected and stunning, you can’t help but gasp or utter a cuss word out loud in the theatre. 

While The Invisible Man included undertones of a MeToo perspective and paranormal possibilities, Wolf Man makes no apologies for being a popcorn monster movie with gooey special effects abound. Think of it as The Fly (1986) with paws.

You have your rabid creature in the Oregonian woods, a young family holed up in a cabin, and the dad mending a nasty infection in his arm after getting clawed. The chemistry between the leads (Julia Garner and Christopher Abbott) is scattershot, the script is thin, and the predictability factor is surface-level, but these shortcomings didn’t detour me from being fascinated by the director’s execution.

Leigh Whannell presents a clinic on shock element timing, suspenseful music placement, and shadowy cinematography that keep you looking for the creature and any possible escape out of the woods. In one second, the camera pans the horizon for movement; the next second, the huff and puff off the creature’s breath comes from a different direction, and by the time you and the characters figure it out, an arm gets mauled.

Despite its lack of metaphor, this one-trick funhouse successfully melds visual deception, body horror, and contextual CGI when it’s finally time to pull the curtain on the transforming Wolf Man.

For a B-movie for the sake of a B-movie, I’ll bite.

Wolf Man (2025) *** out of *****