Another day, another woefully generic title. I guess that’s the state of things now, in 2025. I mean, let’s see if I can come up with a better title than this right fucking now. Okay, we’ve got, of course, werewolves, woods, and family as keywords, how about Blood of the Old? Wow, that sounds actually cool. What do you think? It certainly sounds better than their title. However, I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on our little crew here as this is actually a reboot of the once highly popular Wolf Man franchise. Still, if it’s a reboot and you’re basically changing the whole concept along with the story, why not change the title? I’m smelling studio interference here but I digress.
The first movie in the franchise, The Wolf Man, came out back in 1941 and the last one was Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman released in 2010 and starring Benicio del Toro. They’ve now officially run out of variation of the original title so I suspect that the next installment will be simply titled Wolf. Just like that 1994 movie about werewolves starring Jack Nicholson. You see what I mean by these titles? Moving on, the director is Leigh Whannell of his Saw fame. I have to add that I also liked his previous two movies The Invisible Man and Upgrade. Wolf Man 2025 is sadly just a barely watchable creature feature full of boring dialogues and predictable plot developments. I recommend it only for the fans of the genre.
The story follows Blake Lovell, a loving husband and father, who returns to a remote farm where he grew up after his father’s death. He thinks this will be a great bonding experience and his wife Charlotte and daughter Ginger think so too. And I also think this will be a great bonding experience because I simply know a werewolf will start attacking them and Blake will have to fight him off. Just to be clear, I knew this as soon as I saw who the protagonists were. This could’ve been one hell of a movie if they kept the direction it was going in when Ryan Gosling was starring. They’ve described it similar to Nightcrawler, a 2014 neo-noir masterpiece but that story is over now.
Leigh Whannell and his wife Corbett Tuck wrote this script during the pandemic and it shows. You can see where they were going with it, in a direction of isolation, illness, and inevitable death that awaits us all. This is why the atmosphere is quite grim with the sense of impending doom. They also drew from their real-life experiences after a horrible illness struck their friend. I highly suggest you watch the third episode of the TV show The Studio starring Seth Rogen as it explores the subject in a fun way. None of this will make the movie any better but at least now you know why it’s like this. I think the script and forced family drama were the biggest issues.
With all of that being said, let’s focus on the positives for the remainder of this review. Runtime is relatively short although it will seem a bit longer due to the pacing issues. You can use this time to freshen up, roll something, or doomscroll until you hear something mildly amusing happening. At least the whole different senses thing was original, spooky, and intense. There are also a couple of really nasty and highly graphic scenes even more brutal than the ones we saw in Saw. The one with the hand was particularly memorable. I also must commend our two leads, Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner.
I recommend you check them out in Sweet Virginia (Abbott) and The Royal Hotel (Garner). They did what they could with this script. Wolf Man was shot in New Zealand, Wellington, and Mangaroa to be more precise and the nature was absolutely breathtaking. Add to this impressive cinematography and you got yourself a true eye-candy. Whew, I managed not to undermine any of those points and I felt the urge so bad. Finally, it’s time to talk about the man, pardon me, wolf, pardon me, the werewolf of the hour and that’s the creature design. And it’s just barely passable, just like this whole movie. I would rather watch Werewolves because it’s at least entertaining.
Director: Leigh Whannell
Writers: Leigh Whannell, Corbett Tuck
Cast: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger, Zac Chandler, Benedict Hardie
Fun Facts: The Pierce Truck Rental truck the Lovell family uses to go to the farm had to be imported to New Zealand from the United States because there was no such truck, with the steering wheel on the left side, to be bought or rented in the entire country.
Rating:
IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4216984/
