Wolf Man (2025) Review

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Sometimes, you think you don’t have a monster within until you realize it runs in your family.


PLOT


2025’s Wolf Man follows Blake Lovell, a stay at home who lives in San Francisco and thrives to have a healthy relationship with his workaholic wife Charlotte and their daughter Ginger. His motive comes from how his own dad Grady was quite stern towards him when they grew up in Oregon. When he gets a mail of death certificate of his dad due to him being reported missing, he decides to invite his family to his childhood home for an impromptu vacation, hoping to maintain a healthy relationship with them all. As they drive through the remote woods, they meet a local named Derek (Benedict Hardie) who leads them to the house as the sun sets. Before they even get there, a creature from the shadows drives them off the road. As Derek gets killed by it, Blake gets his arm scratched as well before he and his family rush to the house and barricade it to protect themselves. As his arm gets bloody infected, Ginger starts to notice him changing in unusual manner: Losing teeth, sweats profusely, suffers noise sensitivity, and lose the ability to speak/understand English. As he also loses his hair & fingernails, fur, claws & fangs would grow and his vision gets distorted. He even gnaws on his injury like an animal, which only frightens his family. When the creature tries to get in through a kitchen door, Charlotte is able to keep it at bay by striking it with a hammer. They then try to make a break for it when jump starting a run down truck next to the barn, but the creature pursues them again until Blake tries defending his family with as much will he has. Charlotte & Ginger return to the house and hide there until he returns spitting out a finger, which only scares them more. He notices their fear and decides to leave, but that gets halted when the creature returns. He stops holding back and chooses to bite off his neck to achieve victory, but shortly after, he realizes the monster he fought was Grady who got infected by the preceding creature that originated of a virus linked to the wildlife. As Blake leaves the house in shock before finalizing his transformation, Charlotte realizes why all that has happened and explains it to her daughter. With no control left, the now monstrous Blake pursues his family from the house, to the barn and to the woods. As he chases them, he gets caught in a bear trap, but bites off his foot to continue the chase. Charlotte arms herself with a rifle as she and Ginger take cover in a Hunting Blind. As Blake gets up there though, Ginger realizes how much pain he is in and wants to die. Charlotte does do the deed in shooting him only after he lunges towards them. As they comfort him drawing his last breath, the film ends with Charlotte & Ginger taking in the beauty of the valleys he previously described to them.


THOUGHTS


Upon finding success with The Invisible Man just weeks before the pandemic changed the industry, Leigh Whannell knew expectations would be high on the next Universal Monster he would end up adapting. He knew how special the lore of werewolves are in the horror genre and decided to give a creative shakeup in making the anti equivalent of that. He knew the transformation would be the most talked about aspect due to the impressive makeup and boy does that deliver because it is far more grotesque than the action that occurs between both beasts. Had that not been so effective, it would’ve been hard to appreciate everything else. Stefan Duscio’s cinematography & Andy Canny’s editing do a great job in channeling a perspective in how animalistic these creatures are supposed to be. You also can’t really go wrong with Benjamin Wallfisch’s score being just as eery as expected in such an intense setting. With all great elements, I think it really brings things full circle in spreading the importance of breaking the cycle of violence that comes from generational trauma. We want to love our families and teach them the dangers out there, but shouldn’t try to scare them when being informative & protective. That was the dynamic of Grady & Blake who visibly saw & did things differently. In his given time, Sam Jaeger showed the former as one too paranoid to be patient in dealing with a threat while being a protector he’s supposed to be with his son. Because of his incapability to find the balance, it only inspired Blake to make sure he would. Christopher Abbott was fantastic in showing the latter as one who was just determined to make every moment count like every other parent tries to do. Everyday, he actually learns to be patient with his daughter Ginger because he understands breakout Matilda Firth is just as curious as he was in his youth. It’s even an opposites attract scenario in his relationship with Charlotte because while he tries to slow things down, Julia Garner shows her character to be living too fast in her line of work for her family to catch up. However, she takes Blake’s time serious when she asks for it because a happy family is built off of good communication. And in the long run, she is just as protective of a parent as her husband is able to be when things get intense. With that being said, it becomes a whole new mission for her to hold her ground as the man she loves starts to lose the will and sanity that she loved him for. His death is pretty sad like previous werewolf movies because the difference is that he lets them know he is protecting them in his dying breath whereas he couldn’t get that realization with his own dad until it was too late. With such a sacrifice, it goes without saying Charlotte & Ginger will do their best to honor all the joy he wanted to embrace with every given moment they had together. I give this movie a fair amount of credit, but there were a few things I couldn’t help scratching my head about. I do respect this movie doing everything you wouldn’t expect from werewolf movies, as expected of an antithesis. My main question about it would be why don’t werewolves turn back after they die? If they can’t turn back unless the sun is out, I don’t get why this particular curse doesn’t do so. Going into the story, it was dumb for Blake to run off when he knew Grady wouldn’t want him to. I know he just wanted a better shot at hunting the deer but if he knew how upset his dad would be, I’d rather not take a risk. Ironically, most of the mistakes made her go to Grady whether or not he was in wolf form. As a human in the cold open, it was totally on him to leave the door unlocked if he didn’t want his son to know about the wolf. In wolf form though, I don’t get why he didn’t climb onto the roof of his house or the roof of the garden if he wanted to kill the Lovells so bad. That confused me more than figuring out how he got to the car so fast without making a sound. Going back to Blake though, I also couldn’t understand why he didn’t get out of the car if he sensed his dad coming or survived all the blood loss from severing his foot. That’s some crazy adrenaline for a curse when you think about it. Other than that, everything else about this movie works for me. In short, 2025’s Wolf Man is a solid monster flick for getting creative in all the scares and its lesson being taught. If you enjoy Leigh Whannell’s past work, I promise you’ll like this too