Wolf Man

For the first 20 minutes, Wolf Man feels like it might become the first great horror film of 2025. It smartly reframes lycanthropy as generational trauma handed down by overbearing fathers who, in their haste to protect their sons, cause untold hurt that never heals. It's an exciting prospect, one the film never lives up to as it devolves into a series of uninteresting scares and poorly staged monster mayhem.

We start with Blake, aged eight, hunting with his father. Their relationship is strained by his father's insistence on military order and an unhealthy fear of everything. Something lives in the woods surrounding their farm in the Oregon mountains. Whatever it is, Blake's father and the other mountain men are scared.

Years later, Blake lives with his family in New York. He's a doting father haunted by his harsh upbringing. We see his temper flare when scared, but it's like a passing cloud on a sunny day. When a letter arrives confirming the death of his missing father, Blake decides to face his demons and return to the farm to put things to rest.

All of this is fascinating, well-directed, and acted drama. The characters are thin, especially Julia Garner's Charlotte, which is a shame, but the talented cast does a lot with very little. Rooting the oncoming horror in understandable character flaws, trauma, and need for companionship makes Wolf Man feel like a much grander saga than it ends up as.

When the family arrives in Oregon, things go south fast as something attacks them on the road, leaving Blake, Charlotte, and their precocious daughter Ginger stranded in the woods. Blake is wounded by the monster, and it soon becomes clear that even if they find safety, the danger is far from over.

It's here that Wolf Man loses its way. Every bit of thematic richness trickles away, leaving the film stranded in the wilderness of tired horror tropes that are neither scary nor inventive. While Christopher Abbot and Garner give committed performances as Blake and Charlotte, neither can salvage material that doesn't care about anything more than cheap jump scares.

I believe a horror film doesn't necessarily have to be scary to be good. It can be unsettling, odd, or even funny, but it should at least try to say something. It's a genre that's designed to speak for the experiences of The Other. Those who are left out, traumatized, or broken in some way. When Wolf Man builds on that foundation, as it does in its tremendous first half, it makes a promise to the audience that it doesn't keep.

As the second half plays out, Wolf Man forgets its setups and thematic richness. It has occasional sparks of brilliance, like a fantastic moment where Blake's newfound hearing turns a spider clambering on a wall into nightmare fuel.

But it feels timid and shallow as if the film ran out of time, money, or interest. The ending is an unearned piece of melodrama that looks and feels like a last-minute insert shot in a studio. In a particularly dire sequence, a big reveal anyone can see coming from a mile away is lost under hurried editing and reaction shots that look like they belong in a different scene.

Director Leigh Whannell knows how to stage scares and he has a remarkable eye for negative space. His first feature, Saw, is one of the great horror films of the 21st century. Even The Invisible Man, which I didn't care for, has moments of brilliance, especially in its first half.

But both films suffer from a lack of conviction in their material. After a solid first act, they fall apart under their belief that they need to be big and loud to drive a point home. Instead, they're at their best when Whannell lets the material speak for itself. There's terror in silence. It lets our imagination wander into the dark places best left unexplored.

I think Whannell is a talented director in search of better material. He'll find it one day, and when that happens, we're in for something truly special. Wolf Man isn't it, and what a shame that is.