'Wolf Man' is another quality take on classic horror

It's not quite on the level of 2020's 'The Invisible Man," but Leigh Whannel has made another well-done re-do of a Universal monster movie

Universal’s “Dark Universe,” a planned Avengers-style series of interlocking blockbusters featuring the old Universal Monsters, had its ambitious plans peter out after just one film, back in 2017.

Instead, Universal has indeed been making new movies featuring creative versions of the monster characters. Five years ago, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, one of the last movies released before the start of the pandemic shutdown, reinvented the classic tale, mostly successfully, as a feminist parable about a woman (Elizabeth Moss) stalked by her invisible ex-boyfriend. (Later this year, we’re getting Guillermo Del Toro’s take on Frankenstein and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s version of The Bride of Frankenstein, although neither is a Universal film.)

Now, we have Whannell once again teaming up with Universal and Blumhouse to adapt another classic monster tale, once again tying the famous story to more modern concepts, this time notions of generational trauma and toxic masculinity.

It’s something of a small and slight story, but this is a filmmaker who knows what he’s doing and for the most part nails it.

Wolf Man begins with a young boy on a hunting trip in rural Oregon with his father. We realize early on that the son is a sweet, nervous boy, while his father is a gruff, hard-ass tough guy. And then they stumble into something scary that may or may not be human.

The plot picks up 30 years later when the son has grown up to be Blake (Christopher Abbott). An out-of-work writer married to an employed one (Julia Garner), the two share a daughter (Matilda Firth). It’s clear from the beginning of this section that Blake is determined not to be the sort of dad that his own father was- but that he’s still haunted by what he went through as a kid.

When he receives word that his long-missing father has been “declared dead,” Blake decides to take his wife and daughter back to his home in the woods of Oregon for a break and for them to have a chance to see where he came from.

It’s probably not spoiling much to say that Blake ends up “infected,” and the bulk of the rest of the film is spent in and around that rural farmhouse. The scares are good, and mostly earned.

I liked a lot of things that this movie does that similar movies often get wrong. It doesn’t spend too much time explaining “the rules” about how getting infected works, what weapons can and can’t kill them, and other things. I also liked that while the characters are established both as city people and writers, it doesn’t try to show them out of their depth when it comes to holding their own in a rural area.

The look of the film is very dark, but it’s also always clear what’s going on, and the film establishes a good sense of how things are laid out in the farmhouse.

Abbott, who is wonderful in almost everything he’s in, gets a rare leading role in a studio picture and makes the most of it, even if he’s buried under makeup for much of the film’s second half. Garner, best known from the Anna Delvey limited series, does her best with an underwritten role, while Firth gives one of the better kid performances in memory. Sam Jaeger shines in a small, creepy performance.

Also, much like Invisible Man, Wolf Man does amazing things with sound design. The things we hear in this film are almost creepier than the things we see.

One more thought: You’re sick of the whole thing about toxic masculinity being used as a metaphor, I have some good news: Thanks to the Trump II “vibe shift,” and Hollywood’s likely pivot to overlearning the lessons of it, I feel like movies are about to never do that ever again.