Wolf Man movie review & film summary (2025) – Roger Ebert

ReviewsLeigh Whannell connected with critics and audiences with 2020’s excellent “The Invisible Man,” an effective reimagining of the classic Universal Monsters character. He returns five years later with a similar stab at an oft-told tale in “Wolf Man,” an attempt to drag this classic movie monster to its primal roots. Sadly, Whannell and his team never figured out how to break this story, delivering a film that’s half-hearted when it shows any pulse at all, a movie that’s almost obsessively underdone on every level from its low lighting to its subdued emotions to its lack of character depth. “Wolf Man” is one of those movies that exists in the space between bad and good, never offensively awful enough to qualify as a complete waste of time but falling short in so many individual elements that it dissipates from memory almost while you’re watching it.After the success of “The Invisible Man,” Universal nearly worked on a version of “Wolf Man” with Ryan Gosling, directed by his collaborator Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine,” “The Place Beyond the Pines”). It’s hard to say what that version would have been, but Cianfrance’s focus on masculine roles and fatherhood feels foundational to this one right from the beginning as a father (Sam Jaeger) spouts hunter theory about the dangers of the world while walking the woods with his son Blake. After a well-shot encounter in a deer blind with something that doesn’t seem human, “Wolf Man” jumps forward decades to introduce us to an adult Blake (Christopher Abbott), now headed back to dad’s cabin to clear it out after his estranged pop was declared dead. Blake is a writer and stay-at-home father to the charming Ginger (Matilda Firth), and, of course, struggling a bit in his marriage to his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner), whose unbelievably thin character details include talking on the phone as she comes in to see her family and looking happier with colleagues than her husband. One of the fatal flaws of Whannell & Tuck’s script is how remarkably little they give their cast to play with in terms of character. I don’t mind a brutal, efficient piece of storytelling that prioritizes plot over person, but it’s disheartening to see a talented performer like Garner look visibly adrift, unsure of what or even who she’s playing.The problems start before our family even gets back to the cabin, crashing in the woods after a poorly-shot jump scare with a wolf-like figure in the road. Before you know it, Blake has been scratched by Mr. Wolf, and the trio has been chased by it to what looks like the only house for miles (that happens to be dad’s). As they figure out how to stop the threat outside, the threat inside continues to grow because, as anyone who has ever seen a movie knows, Blake is about to turn. Whannell is clearly having his most fun as a director on this set concocting and executing Blake’s transformation, a gruesome series of shots of body horror images like nails falling off and teeth doing grisly things designed to make viewers recoil in horror. Can Ginger and Charlotte save themselves from Blake?Whannell and cinematographer Stefan Duscio’s confident grip on the visual language of “The Invisible Man” dissipates here, resulting in a film that’s more consistently frustrating than frightening. It’s under-lit to an almost comical degree and even the moments that should be scary lack the geography needed to increase tension. Every time the film bursts into anything approaching horror or action, the filmmaking collapses in the moment, such as in a werewolf-on-werewolf fight that should be a film highlight but is so choppily edited and clumsily shot that it makes no impact at all. It feels like a lot of “Wolf Man” was rushed, perhaps a victim of a rushed production after the strikes, resulting in a film that often feels more like an obligation than a passion project.It doesn’t help that Whannell and Tuck consistently give up on expressing any sort of thematic depth. Whereas “Invisible Man” inspired debate over its themes, “Wolf Man” introduces ideas like familial trauma and gender roles, only to go absolutely nowhere with them. They’re window dressing on a window that’s too dirty to see through. Again, not every movie needs to “make a statement,” but it’s an aspect of the film that wants to have it both ways, flirting with meaning only to run in the other direction when it’s time to commit, or actually say something. It has so little to inspire conversation that I joked at the end that it was a cautionary tale about the mental and physical toll of being an unemployed writer. There’s something primal in all of us. Just not in this movie.Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wolf-man-film-review-2025