In 2014, when the now almost forgotten success of the Marvel and Disney comics made it fashionable to create their own movie universes, Universal Pictures' management decided to create their own universe of classic monsters. However, the first movie The Mummy (2017) starring Tom Cruise turned out to be such a failure on all sides that the idea of the Dark Universe was immediately abandoned. Instead, Universal Pictures decided to focus on individual but high-quality films.
Thanks to this, the audience got at least The Invisible Man (2020), which takes the classic "monster" to tell a relevant story about gaslighting. The film's director, Lee Vonnell, has been recognized by audiences and critics, who have begun to expect new and interesting achievements from the artist. Wolf Man is the director's next movie. It definitely turned out to be simpler and more boring, but it still successfully combines classic monsters with relevant, modern meanings.
| Title | Wolf Man |
| Genre | horror movie, thriller |
| Director | Leigh Whannell |
| Starring | Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Sam Jager, Matilda Firth |
| Studios | Blumhouse Productions, Universal Pictures |
| Timing | 1 hour 43 minutes |
| Year | 2025 |
| Website | IMDb |
The writer Blake (Christopher Abbott) suffered from an extremely strict upbringing as a child from his father, who was diligently protecting his son from a mysterious creature that lived in the woods near their home. Blake left his home and his father for the big city. He also managed to create his own family - thanks to his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). Not everything is perfect in Blake and Charlotte's life together, but the official news of the death of the protagonist's father makes them forget about their troubles. All three of them leave San Francisco for Oregon, Blake's home. The trip quickly turns into a struggle for survival when Blake's family encounters a mysterious animal-like creature. The creature injures Blake, which causes him to turn into something creepy as well.
The image of the werewolf, like many other classic monsters, can be interpreted in different ways. For example, it can be perceived as the dominance of human animal instincts over reason. Another possible option is the change of a once close person beyond recognition, which always causes disgust and sincere fear. It is the latter that The Wolfman 2025 focuses on, and no one expected anything else from Vonnell.
However, the director's new work becomes a hostage to expectations, and comparisons with The Invisible Man cannot be avoided, and Wolf Man still loses significantly to the author's previous work. The story of Cecilia, whom the scientist Adrian was trying to drive crazy, worked on many levels and frightened us first of all with its realism, with the horror of an almost everyday level, which became more tangible and weighty because of this. Wolf Man takes the path of even greater simplification, but this significantly limits the space for interesting artistic, plot and stylistic decisions.
Almost the entire plot is one long night of a family alone with a monster. Usually, authors of werewolf stories like to dive into folklore or tell about entire communities and communes through the prism of the confrontation between humans and monsters. There is nothing like that in Wolf Man: there are few critical situations, and if you're being very strict, there is only one, just a long one; the characters' relationships and biographies are not filled with interesting moments. This makes it very easy to get bored while watching.
At the same time, the titular werewolf is almost never seen in the movie, and many people were not enthusiastic about his image in the trailers because it was too similar to a human. But after watching the movie up to this point, which is frankly the key moment for fans of monster movies, all questions disappear. After all, the center of the whole film is not the struggle for life, not the study of monsters or existence alongside them, but the transformation of a once-familiar person into something completely alien.
Wolf Man focuses on the changes in Blake's behavior and physiology, with the latter not hesitating to show horrific and disgusting shots. Gradually, even the color palette and sound design begin to demonstrate the growing gap between the protagonist and his family. The process of transformation takes up a significant part of the running time, during which time Blake's role in the script will change several times, forcing Charlotte and Ginger to quickly adapt to the new conditions. Roles and archetypes in the script are gradually transformed. It is difficult to see this at a superficial glance, but the transformation is the axis on which other elements of Wolf Man are strung.
The average viewer who just likes classic stories where monsters kill people (or vice versa) is unlikely to like Wolf Man. It's too monotonous and strange, as if it's not about what the trailer is trying to advertise. It's also a shame that the filmmakers hardly show the beauty of nature, which is a common theme in such horror films. By trying to remove everything superfluous and focus the audience's attention on a specific topic in all its hideousness, Wolf Man seems to have lost something critically important for the mass audience.
The latter is especially evident during the final act of the story, which, after an ambiguous but original vector of development, returns to the rails of the template horror. Here you have amazing coincidences, tangible delays, even the stupidity of the characters, and an atmosphere that everyone has experienced literally hundreds of times. It seems as if the management of Blumhouse Productions interfered with the production of the movie and the director's ideas to adjust them to their own standards. Which, frankly, after the endless series of Astral films, I'm tired of.
Wolf Man is undoubtedly a good movie, but it's hard to define a clear audience for which it should be recommended. However, Vonnell has already turned a budget of $7 million into $144.5 in box office receipts. It is likely that even with a bigger budget of $25 million, the director will be able to bring the studio tangible profits. After all, by modern filmmaking standards, this is still relatively little money for a decent movie.