Review: Wolfman 2025
By William Pattison
For Horror Bob's Blog
Gore and scares! Recently I was fortunate enough to have a
friend of mine who does a podcast send me a screener he got a the
Universal/Blum House reimagining of the classic Universal monster The Wolfman
from director Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man) and starring Christopher
Abbott, Julia Garner, and Matilda Firth.
Wolfman tells the story of Blake, a Mr. Mom who lives in the
wilds of New York city with his boss
babe journalist wife Charlotte and his daughter Ginger. When Blake gets the
final notice from the government that his missing father has been listed as
dead, he convinces Charlotte and Ginger to come with him to the remote
government run farm his father had been posted at since Blake was a young boy
to collect his father’s things.
So, they take a moving van and head up to the cabin. On the
way Blake gets lost but luckily his father’s neighbor’s son shows up and offers
to direct them to the cabin. But then a werewolf jumps in the road in front of
them, which causes Blake to swerve and cause the van to fall down a hill and
end up huHeng up in a large tree. The neighbor’s son falls out and is ripped
apart by the werewolf. Blake gets his family out of the van on the opposite
side from the monster. Blake goes to escape but the werewolf rips the door off
the van and cuts him with its claw.
Blake and his family manage to find and get into the cabin.
Blake barricades them in the cabin, but he finds out that he is now infected by
the werewolf and is being slowly turned into a wolf man himself. Now Charlotte
and Ginger must watch helplessly as Blake slowly loses his humanity and becomes
a blood thirsty predator.
I have to say I was looking forward to seeing this film
because Leigh Whannell said he took inspiration from the original The Wolfman
and David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Unfortunately Whannell fails horribly at this
and a lot more. The reason why is because though Blake does come off as a
sympathetic character, the story overwhelms this with a lot of modern social
political bullshit. Blake acts like a good father who cares for and protects his
daughter, yet the screenplay makes it out like his actions are wrong and toxic.
Also when she is introduced Charlotte comes off and cold towards Blake. She
comes home while on the phone yammering away with her editor loudly while Blake
is trying to finish dinner. He asks her to take it elsewhere. After she hangs
up she condescendingly orders him not to do that again like he was a child.
Pretty much throughout the film Charlotte didn’t act like she was in a marriage
with Blake. She actually even seemed a bit too clinical during his
transformation. It was only at the end when she really showed any emotion
towards him. The annoying kid was far more emotional than mommy was.
Also the thing that people actually came to the movie for
wasn’t that impressive. Blake’s transformation didn’t scream werewolf. Give me
a break! Werewolves are hairy and Blake was bland as shit. Besides the finger
nails and fangs at the end there was nothing wolf-like in the transformation.
They should have given him a dog muzzle and dog-like ears at the very least,
but nothing. Disappointing.
The only good thing in this film was the photography. This
film was beautifully shot, but that is it.
So as a long time, my entire life, fan of werewolf films I
cannot recommend this film. This film fails in both story because of bullshit
woke crap. It fails at being a werewolf film because what Blake became bore no
resemblance to a werewolf. You want a good film that does it right watch the
Jack Nicholson classic WOLF or even the original The Wolfman and even the 2010
remake of the Wolfman with Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. All these are
worlds better than this film.
Keep on Creepin', Horror Bob's Blog
