Leigh Whannell’s latest film is a compelling reimagining of one of Universal’s classic monsters.

As a big fan of Leigh Whannell’s work, I was excited for Wolf Man, his new take on the classic Universal Studios monster. Whannell hit it out of the park with his last two films—sci-fi actioner Upgrade (2018) and The Invisible Man (2020), his previous foray into Universal monsters. Both were tightly plotted thrillers featuring creative camera work and visual effects, with compelling, well-rounded characters. I went into Wolf Man with high expectations.

Christopher Abbott (Poor Things, It Comes at Night) and Julia Garner (Ozark, Inventing Anna, The Assistant) star as stay-at-home dad Blake and busy journalist Charlotte, a husband and wife living in San Francisco with their young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). When Blake discovers that his missing father, once obsessed with a creature said to lurk in the woods near his home, is now presumed dead, Blake persuades Charlotte that the family should travel to his father’s remote cabin in Oregon to help repair their fraying marriage.

Near the property, Blake and his family soon discover that the creature is real when it attacks them. They run and barricade themselves inside the house, but not before the beast injures Blake. The situation grows tense not just because a monster prowls outside—something is wrong with Blake.

While Wolf Man is a monster movie, it’s also a family drama. Julia Garner anchors the film emotionally as Charlotte and her daughter, Ginger, cope with what’s happening with their husband and father, Blake. Since her turn in Ozark, Garner has been one to watch, and she’s at her best here.

Christopher Abbot also delivers a great performance as Blake struggles to avoid passing generational trauma down to his daughter by not repeating his father’s mistakes. He is a man essentially suffering from a degenerative mental and physical illness—as Whannell chooses to depict lycanthropy as being like a communicable disease—who struggles to maintain his humanity and protect his daughter.

Whannell puts us in Blake’s head, depicting his deterioration from the illness from his perspective. He hallucinates, experiences sharpened senses in a memorable scene where he hears loud noises, and begins to lose the ability to understand speech. This is a subtly terrifying part of the film as his world becomes unfamiliar, and even his family starts to become strangers when he sees them through infrared vision, unfamiliarly tinged in strange hues with burning, glowing eyes.

While I’m not a huge fan of the werewolf design, I admire that the creature was created using prosthetics. I also appreciated the gradual transformation and every special effect used to achieve it. The stages of it echo the idea of the lycanthropy behaving like a disease.

I don’t think Wolf Man reaches the heights of Whannell’s The Invisible Man. However, it’s still a thoughtful version of the material that brings a different perspective, with a sharp focus on human relationships driving it forward rather than surface-level shocks. Leigh Whannell has proven again that he’s an artist to watch, and I look forward to whatever he does next.

Wolf Man opens in theaters on January 17, 2025.

Overall Score: 7/10