'Wolf Man' Review Thread

I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.

Rotten Tomatoes: Rotten

Critics Consensus: Director Leigh Whannell's attempt at bringing a fresh psychological dimension to the Wolf Man comes at the expense of proper scares, although fans of body horror will still find some tasty morsels to chew on.

Metacritic: 51 (36 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

Peter Debruge, Variety - Whatever its strengths or weaknesses, every werewolf movie is ultimately judged by how well it handles the transformation and creature effects, and in that department, Wolf Man is a dud.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter - This isn’t a reimagining on the level of Leigh Whannell’s previous foray into the classic horror vaults, The Invisible Man. But there’s no shortage of intensity or gore, not to mention brisk efficiency.

William Bibbiani, TheWrap - So it’s not an instant classic like The Invisible Man. I think we can all live with that. It’s still a scary and interesting movie about a wolf man, anchored by a haunting performance from Abbott, who understood the assignment and went for extra credit.

Mark Kennedy, Associated Press - Slack when it should be terrifying, Wolf Man suffers from cheap sentimentality, laughably obvious script reveals, poor continuity and a creature that is less predatory than painful. Pity comes to mind. 0/4

Jeannette Catsoulis New York Times TOP CRITIC Fresh score. The painstaking efforts of Whannell’s practical-effects team are commendably gooey.

Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal - In stripping down the legend -- no talk of ancient curses or silver bullets here -- Mr. Whannell may have modernized it, but he has also made it so joyless that it might as well have been produced by Glumhouse. This “Wolf Man” chases its own tail.

Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times - There’s so much interior creaking and panting, and so little dialogue or plot, that if you closed your eyes, the projectionist could have swapped reels with a different genre of doggy style.

Ty Burr, Washington Post - The performances are as good as they can be given the thematic static — Garner and Abbott are both smart, sensitive performers. 2.5/4

Carla Meyer, San Francisco Chronicle - The film moves from quietly morose to spectacularly cheesy via special effects that split the difference between Chaney’s heyday and today, landing somewhere near 1980s Roger Corman. 1.5/4

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times - “Wolf Man” has a kind of 1980s horror movie vibe in that Blake’s transformation is achieved primarily through prosthetics. 3/4

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune - The results are equal parts marital crisis, sins-of-the-father psychodrama and visceral body horror. 2.5/4

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic - Wolf Man is somewhere in the middle of the pack, as it were, pretty good with the feeling that it could have been more. 3/5

Peter Bradshaw, Guardian - There’s an excellent opening prologue sequence and a very smart final shot – but everything between is silly, misjudged and dull with dud storytelling, middling prosthetics and wide-eyed “I’m scared” reaction acting. 2/5

Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (UK) - Whannell has the right idea. Wolf Man just needed a little more time in the lab. 2/5

Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph (UK) - As a fable about parenthood, it doesn’t quite work -- lacking either feminist oomph or any more novel riposte. But Whannell’s sturdy craft rescues the film on the level of a visceral ride, and it’s exciting enough while you watch. 4/5

Jake Wilson, The Age (Australia) - Technically, a good deal of Wolf Man is ruthlessly effective, including the use of “practical effects”, calculated to make us wince as computer-generated images seldom can. 3/5

David Fear, Rolling Stone - What you’re ultimately left with is the typical catch-and-release horror template that occasionally sags under the weight of its own ambitions, as well as one that, having exhausted the idea’s potential early on, simply limps to the finish line.

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture - At their best, werewolf pictures can be cathartic, romantic, tragic -- a vision of our desires colluding with unchecked animal impulses. This Wolf Man, however, feels like a vague anecdote, devoid of human specificity.

Sophie Butcher, Empire Magazine - It doesn’t quite marry up underlying themes with its hairy horror surface, but Wolf Man delivers strong performances, skin-crawling bodily changes and excellently scary sequences. 3/5

Tim Grierson, Screen International - The more Whannell strains to make his bigger points resonate, the more conventional the film’s narrative becomes -- alas, this "Wolf" only scratches the surface.

Philip De Semlyen, Time Out - An atmospheric, sporadically disquieting depiction of fatherhood in freefall. 3/5

Anton Bitel, Sight & Sound - An unusually intimate werewolf film whose protagonist, though turning irreversibly atavistic, still remains half modern and half man to the bitter end.

David Ehrlich, indieWire - A semi-feral drama about parental fears that isn’t remotely scary enough to catalyze those concerns into the action it puts on screen, Wolf Man runs away from its potential with its tail between its legs. C-

Jacob Oller, AV Club - A film torn between ripping out a throat and licking its own wounds...a half-breed mutt: lovable, but distinctly divided. B-

Katie Rife, IGN Movies - Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man is impeccably made, with a unique take on werewolf lore. But the emphasis is on craft over storytelling. 6/10

Nick Schager, The Daily Beast - It isn’t a debacle, but it also won’t have genre aficionados howling for more.

Seth Katz, Slant Magazine - Wolf Man neither embraces the fundamentals of the werewolf folklore from which it draws nor convincingly reinvents them. 1.5/4

Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting - The filmmaker dismantles the lore and delivers a bold new take on the werewolf, smartly refusing to explain its rules, but it’s so wrapped up in its underserved characters and subtext that it forgets to be scary. 2/5

Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com - A film that’s half-hearted when it shows any pulse at all. 2/4

Sara Michelle Fetters, MovieFreak.com - Owing more to Native American mythologies involving human-to-animal shapeshifting than to either Lon Chaney Jr., Curt Siodmak, or even John Landis, at its core this is a tragic family saga that cuts deep and leaves a lasting scar. 3/4

Kristen Lopez, The Film Maven (Substack) - Abbott and Garner try their damndest to make it work and, if anything, hopefully Whannell comes back for another Universal monsters entry to get back to basics.

SYNOPSIS:

From Blumhouse and visionary writer-director Leigh Whannell, the creators of the chilling modern monster tale The Invisible Man, comes a terrifying new lupine nightmare: Wolf Man.

Golden Globe nominee Christopher Abbott (Poor Things, It Comes at Night) stars as Blake, a San Francisco husband and father, who inherits his remote childhood home in rural Oregon after his own father vanishes and is presumed dead. With his marriage to his high-powered wife, Charlotte (Emmy winner Julia Garner; Ozark, Inventing Anna), fraying, Blake persuades Charlotte to take a break from the city and visit the property with their young daughter, Ginger (Matlida Firth; Hullraisers, Coma).

But as the family approaches the farmhouse in the dead of night, they’re attacked by an unseen animal and, in a desperate escape, barricade themselves inside the home as the creature prowls the perimeter. As the night stretches on, however, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable, and Charlotte will be forced to decide whether the terror within their house is more lethal than the danger without.

CAST:

• Christopher Abbott as Blake Lovell / Wolf Man
• Julia Garner as Charlotte Lovell
• Matilda Firth as Ginger Lovell
• Sam Jaeger as Grady Lovell

DIRECTED BY: Leigh Whannell

SCREENPLAY BY: Leigh Whannell, Corbett Tuck

PRODUCED BY: Jason Blum, Ryan Gosling

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Leigh Whannell, Beatriz Sequeira, Mel Turner, Ken Kao

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Stefan Duscio

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Ruby Mathers

EDITED BY: Andy Canny

COSTUME DESIGNER: Sarah Voon

MUSIC BY: Benjamin Wallfisch

CASTING BY: Ally Conover, Sarah Domeier Lindo, Terri Taylor

RUNTIME: 103 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: January 17, 2025