"Wolf Man" - Review

Blake (Christopher Abbott) finally receives news that his father has officially been declared dead. So he takes his wife (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) to his old home in the woods, hoping to get away from it all and get his head together. But something attacks Blake in the woods and he begins to change. What could possibly be happening to him?

I like Leigh Whannell as a director: "Upgrade" is a phenomenally made low budget B-movie body horror nightmare, "The Invisible Man" did an excellent job updating its premise and having things to say (as well as using its low budget), the "Insidious" movies are bonkers good fun and remain of a relatively high consistency throughout (which is rare, particularly in horror series) and I enjoy "Death Sentence" for all of its unpleasantness, and "Cooties" is good fun. I was curious about this one, as he's not really had any duds thus far (the closest is maybe writing "Death Sentence", which is a rather ugly movie I remember enjoying, though a lot of people seem to slate "Dead Silence" and I am one of its few defenders even if Whannell doesn't), and "The Wolf Man" is a pretty difficult one to screw up, especially with the obvious readings you could add to it to make it a companion piece to "The Invisible Man" - rage and how it is a beast which changes men. Add to that Garner and Abbott and you have a slam dunk of a bottle movie!
Only, it's a dud.
It's infuriating to say that. The movie is called "The Wolf Man" so we know what he's going to turn into and what is happening, okay, fine, so you lean into the camp or the body horror. It does neither there, spending an inordinately long time in the cabin with a slow transformation. Okay, fine, it's about illness and how it transforms us and makes us monsters in the eyes of those we love. Again, no: the body horror angle is weak and underplayed (especially after stuff like "The Substance" in recent memory), so we have to hope it's going for a "confined in a tight space with the one you love as he turns violent" angle, but this too never reaches the tension it needs. The closest it comes is an attack atop a green house, but it's weak stuff, particularly if you compare it to stuff like "Crawl", "Hush", "Don't Breathe" and even the Soska Sisters' remake of "Rabid" (better body horror too in that case) in recent years alone. There is a token effort early on to hint at Blake maybe perhaps having rage issues, which could be the other metaphor they're going for, but again it's dropped and moved to the side in favour of their milquetoast locked room bottle movie. Thus we get a werewolf movie which takes too long to transform into a werewolf, loses the camp, fun and blood factor when it does, and isn't substantive and meaty enough or (crucially) tense and scary enough to sustain what is there, despite strong performances. I appreciated the "Ginger Snaps" reference with the daughter though, and that Benedict Hardie (the assassin from "Upgrade" and the job interviewer from "The Invisible Man") having another cameo in this as Whannell's mascot.
Honestly, if you wanted a great Abbott locked room horror film about change and violence, watch "Piercing".