Webby Watches Horror: Wolf Man (2025)
This movie was marketed as a remake of 1941's The Wolf Man, and in the general sense it is, but it's not exactly a remake. I consider it more of a reimagining, personally, which might be a pretentious way to look at it, but ah well. It tells the story of Blake, who takes his family to his childhood home to manage what his late father left behind, and his past trauma comes back to bite him.
Ok, maybe that attempt at a witty summary is a tad forced.
Anyway. There's more to this movie than meets the eye, and beasties I've got my magnifying glass. As always, there will be SPOILERS AHEAD!
So, as I said, this 'remake' isn't exactly a remake, because instead of taking the same characters and the same story Again, we get new characters in a similar situation as the original. Instead of Larry Talbot, bachelor who lost a brother, we have Blake, a father and husband who lost his estranged father.
There's a lot that's unsaid in this story that's told through body language, environmental storytelling, or if you use your brain and add up some key facts. (There's also some pretty obvious stuff said directly by the characters with their mouth but based on some of the other reviews I've read, apparently plenty of viewers missed it.)
For example, we may not see a lot of the abuse that Blake suffered at the hands of his father, but we see the fear in young Blake's actions and the way it affected him well into adulthood. We see Blake trying so hard to avoid becoming his father that he may even be overcorrecting in the opposite direction, indulging her in things that many 'normal' parents wouldn't. (I want it on the record that I think he was doing a fantastic job, by the way. He was a god damn good father.)
I can't talk about this movie without mentioning the sound design because it goes SO HARD. Once Blake is infected and he begins to change, we are treated to his perspective and everything sounds so strange, loud, unfamiliar. One of my favorite scenes is the incredibly tense sequence where he goes upstairs to investigate the loud banging, only to find the World's Loudest Spider crawling up a wall. SUCH a good bait and switch.
And speaking of Blake's perspective, I was absolutely ENAMORED wih the shift in lighting and sound when we're with him. It's so unsettling, and I imagine it must have been so terrifying for Blake; his world transforming as his senses, instincts, and even brain chemistry are slowly altered. It breaks my heart when he loses the ability to understand or even see his wife and daughter clearly.
Blake and Charlotte needed to talk, and the cabin would have been the perfect place for it, away from work and other outside distractions. They could have really been able to try to communicate, patch the holes in their relationship, but just as Blake had always feared, the part of him that came from his father destroyed that possibility.
The horror of this movies, as in the original, is not simply 'There's a Monster!' as one might expect. There's the horror that Charlotte and Ginger face, of course, as Blake changes and as Grady attacks, but there's also the horror that Blake himself experiences. His perspective is just as important to the story as theirs: the horror of becoming the monster you never wanted to be, and the terror in your family's eyes as they look at you. (I'm fairly certain that's why one of the covers for this movie is Ginger hiding her face in fear, peering through her fingers- it's what Blake fears.)
And worst of all, you can't tell them that you still love them and would never hurt them.
As Blake's condition worsens and his movements become more erratic and animalistic, his voice becomes incomprehensible to his family's ears. Yet, when we are shown his perspective, we see he is lucid, trying desperately to reach out despite being unable to understand what his family is saying. There is a barrier between them, filtering their voices from each other.
This leads me to infer that Blake, despite his condition, was never actually a danger to his family, not in the way that Grady was. There are many times, such as the fantastic scene in the barn, where Blake could have attacked, yet chose not to. He even backs off when he realizes that they're afraid of him, and even in the throes of infection, he shows he has enough presence of mind to go after Grady rather than attack his family.
Something else I loved was the relationship between Blake and Ginger. They were so close, so connected, that Ginger never doubted her father loved her, and saw him even as he changed. She must have remembered that he said he never wanted her to know the pain he'd felt, and understood he would rather die than let that happen.
The scene in the deer blind was so sad, but beautiful too. Blake lunging at Charlotte to force her into killing him at the place where he first encountered this violence all those years ago. He ends the cycle where it began for him, ensuring that he never became the same monster as his father, or risked hurting anyone else in the same way.
A lot of people didn't seem to 'get' this movie, from what I've seen. (To be fair, it is also possible that I am a touch biased, being such a Leigh Whannell fan. I acknowledge this.) "It wasn't scary!" Horror isn't always trying to scare you. "There wasn't a wolf transformation!" You're thinking of werewolves, not a wolf man. And we did get one, just slow and agonizing instead of dramatic and monstrous. "Why did character do this thing instead of other thing?" People sometimes act irrationally under stress, this is a stupid criticism.
Before we get to the scoring portion, I'd like to mention some other details I really enjoyed: Blake's face in the truck as he is transforming is reminiscent of the face he was playfully making at his daughter in the kitchen at the start; Charlotte knowing how to jumpstart a vehicle despite being a City Girl; the reveal that Blake had been changing a lot sooner than we were shown simply because we were seeing things from his perspective at the time.
All in all, I think I'd give this one 8 ghosts out of ten. There was nothing glaringly wrong with it, and I did enjoy it quite a bit, but I can't help but feel like it's just not as memorable To Me as some of Leigh's other work. Still, I did love the story he chose to tell with this reimagining.
Typically, I'm not really a fan of remakes, since they tend to forget what resonated from the original, but honestly? This one works. it keeps the main concept but adds to it in a way that's more heartbreaking instead of just retelling the same story over again. Kind of breaks the cycle in that way.
