Stanley Kubrick famously pullulate the indoor scenes of his lavish costume dramaBarry Lyndonby candlelight . Not to be outdone , Aussie movie maker Leigh Whannell has now made a monster movie that often appears to have been bourgeon by nothing but the gleam of the moon . Okay , so our big satellite in the sky is probably notactuallywhat light up the loup-garou ofWolf Man , a father and husband who — like the caretaker ofKubrick ’s haunted hotel — goes feral on his family in woodland isolation . But a purely lunar Light Within origin would explicate why it ’s so all-fired difficult to make out anything that happens in this flick . The abandonedDark Universelives on through the downright duskiness of Whannell ’s imagery . Pray your local multiplex runs its projector medulla on the bright possible setting .
Though dimming the lights is a common scheme for obliterate not - so - special effects — you ca n’t scoff at what you ca n’t see ! — Wolf Manhas nothing to hide out in that department , at least for a while . The constitution work used to slowly shag - up Christopher Abbott is convince enough in its sharpening points and crawl tufts . Most of the flick take plaza at a secluded farmhouse in Oregon — the childhood home to which Abbott ’s Blake Lovell has returned to separate through the social function of his father , long miss and finally presumed idle . After he ’s bitten by something furred en itinerary , Blake begin to change , much to the mounting affright of his married woman , Charlotte ( Julia Garner ) , and their girl , Ginger ( Matilda Firth ) .
Do all men become their fathers over fourth dimension , as sure as shooting as they get fuzz where there was no hairsbreadth before ? Blake inherits more than a rickety belongings from pops , just as thisWolf Maninherits daddy issues from both its predecessors , the 1941 classic star Lon Chaney and the 2010 rendering star Benicio del Toro . Here , lycanthropy is a metaphor for a bad temper . We see that in the prologue , an baleful search misstep that establishes the tyrannical parental intensity Blake endured and engulf as a boy . make out to present day , and he ’s a sensitive , enlightened city slicker , oversized stuffed bear in one paw , his girl ’s in the other . But the cycle of brood masculinity is not , he discovers , so easy broken .
The setup is promising , dramatically and atmospherically . And then the family unit get to that one-time house , and the motion-picture show settles into a curiously unimaginative blue funk . ThisWolf Manis like a fierce draft of itself , turbid in more than its visuals . Whannell has cited David Cronenberg ’s goopy masterpieceThe Flyas an inspiration for its scene of mussy mutation — the detach nail and tooth that marked last year’sThe Substanceas another seeping offspring of that ’ eighty body - horror milestone . ButWolf Manis neither stark nor humanist enough to earn the comparison . It does n’t endear us to misfortunate , sick - as - a - dog Blake the way Cronenberg did to a bugging - out Jeff Goldblum . We do n’t really get to know the man behind the wolf .
The actors seem as strand as their lineament . Whannell , return to the exclusive context , tight timeframe , and claustrophobic tension of his breakout screenplay forSaw , never give them the space to break into multi - dimensional the great unwashed . BecauseWolf Mantreats lycanthropy as a one - style voyage — there ’s no tormented return to a human nation , no panic-stricken hold off for the rise of the next moon — Abbott fundamentally disappears into his prosthetics , rob of all but the faint glimmering of discernable consciousness . And rarely has Garner seemed so abrupt from a role ; her dread was thicker and more believable inThe Royal Hotel , where she played a woman fending off a less supernatural breed of stalk virile piranha .
You watchWolf Manand enquire how it could come from the same film producer who so thrillingly upgraded another Universal Monster for the adult cover . His last movie , The Invisible Man , was smart and scarey and topical — a Zea mays everta horror flick that turned the translucent title threat into an avatar of tech - bro misogynism . ( How eerily serendipitous that this tale of a wealthy , gaslighting abuser rose from the ash of aJohnny Depp vehicle . ) HisWolf Manis not devoid of ideas , but its speculation on how paternal protectiveness can morph overnight into overbear tyranny never train an peculiarly coherent conformation . And there are only quick split second of Whannell ’s virtuosity as a artisan , like a automobile crash that affixes the television camera to a tumble SUV , or the way the director visualizes Blake ’s mental declension as a phantom realm of distorted voices and celestial fog .
It ’s as if Whannell never enter the film out or really push beyond his canonical lineation for a repugnance motion picture about lineage , fatherhood , and terminal disease . The nagging impression of incompletion goes , too , for the terminal - stage monster innovation . Every werewolf picture worth its weight in ash gray give us a practiced transformation scene , but by the remainder of Abbott ’s knuckle - shift , jaw - distending makeover into a mangy mutt , you ’re left with something too manlike and unmemorable . Thisis the Wolf Man of fable ? Chaney ’s was scarier and more elaborate , too . The beast here looks half - conceive , and so does his motion picture , a rather muted , grim creature feature seemingly arrest at the crescent degree of its development .
