WOLF MAN is an event not just because it’s a new wolf man but because it’s the fourth movie directed by Leigh Whannell, the last two being UPGRADE and THE INVISIBLE MAN. As with the latter, he’s working with Blumhouse to do a mid-budget modern take on one of the classic monsters (this time co-writing with his wife Corbett Tuck).

His version takes place in a mountainous part of Oregon where very few people live. In 1995, a hiker disappears there, and the locals claim to have spotted him suffering from some kind of disease. (I like that this turns him into a local legend like the Wild Man of the Navidad or the North Pond hermit.)

Grady Lovell (Sam Jaeger, LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN) is a serious hunter, possibly survivalist, definitely very intense, living off the grid in a little cabin in the woods. He brings his son Blake (Zac Chandler) hunting and is always yelling at him to pay attention to his lessons about how dangerous the world is and shit. They get separated chasing a deer and Blake gets a glimpse of… well, you know. They end up hiding in a deer blind listening to an unseen beast tearing up their deer. That night Blake hears his dad talking to someone on the CB about what he saw. He told his kid it was a bear, but he knows it was something else. Or maybe he’s crazy. That would be fair to assume.

Thirty years later Blake is played by Christopher Abbott, who I only know from his great performance in POSSESSOR, so I was surprised to see him as kind of a lovable Paul Rudd type here. (Also, they did a really good job casting the young version.) He’s introduced in San Francisco with his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth, DISENCHANTED), he’s carrying multiple Exploratorium gift shop bags and a giant teddy bear for her, she’s wearing fairy wings, begging for ice cream even though she already got hot chocolate. They have an adorable relationship but when she climbs on top of a traffic barrier he angrily snaps at her about how it’s his job to protect her and she needs to listen to him. Basically turns into his dad, except that he immediately catches himself and apologizes.

Things are also cold with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE), a work-obsessed magazine writer. She feels distant from Ginger while Blake has bonded with her as a stay-at-home dad.

Blake got the hell away from his dad as soon as he could, didn’t keep in touch, and now receives word that he’s been legally declared dead after many years missing. Since he needs to go clear out the cabin he convinces Charlotte to take time off and come along, hoping some time out in nature will help heal the family.

And they do have some laughs together. Then there’s a car crash and a growling beast and the whole vacation has gone to shit. They spend it trying to survive the night so they can go for help in the morning.

Whannell’s big twist on werewolf mythology is to ditch it. His version of lycanthropy is just an aggressive infection, there’s nothing about lunar cycles or silver bullets. You get bit, you turn into a wolf man after a while, that’s it. In an interview with Fangoria, Whannell cites THE FLY and THE THING as the biggest influences, mentions “body horror” repeatedly. (He also mentions UNDER THE SKIN, AMOUR and THE ZONE OF INTEREST?)

So there are some good scares involving this animal scratching at the outside of the cabin, but the most effective stuff is showing Blake’s changes from his point-of-view (how he discovers his super-hearing is particularly brilliant) and alternately from Charlotte’s. The primary theme is the importance of communication between loved ones, so it’s upsetting to switch between their perspectives as they hear each other’s speech as bizarre gibberish. There are definitely moments that tapped into my experiences and fears of losing faculties from brain diseases.

The atmosphere is strong, there’s some well-executed chasing, some good gross outs (spoiler: Charlotte really gets worried when she finds him munching on his infected arm wound), and Abbott gets really into hunching and crawling and acting weird. I’m still a big fan of Garner, and she’s a good choice to step up and take the baton as the lead after Abbott goes animal. Also it’s kinda cute that they have her wearing a plaid shirt like the werewolf trope (I was thinking it came from Lon Chaney Jr. but his shirt wasn’t plaid, and I looked into it and no one seems to know where it comes from). There’s a nice nod to Whannell’s past as the guy who wrote SAW when (SPOILER) Blake gnaws his own leg off to escape a bear trap, but he literally and figuratively can’t go very far after that. I thought what now? It’s not gonna grow back, is it? What will he do? Well I guess crawl, maybe hop, you don’t really see him much after that.

The scariest times are definitely when you don’t see the wolf, just hear its growling and see its hot breath rising from the other side of the blind, or see a shape moving through the foggy translucent tenting of the greenhouse (one of the cooler set pieces). I say that both as a compliment to the director’s horror chops and an admission that unfortunately this is not a cool looking wolf man.

I think I kinda like this movie, but I know I was disappointed. It’s that sad phenomenon of enjoying a movie all the way through but when it ends it feels like it wasn’t enough. The problem is more in concept than execution. On one hand, I like the idea that the painful transformation takes place over hours, and I don’t blame them for noticing that all werewolf transformation sequences are held up to AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and THE HOWLING and none can compete. On the other hand, a werewolf movie that doesn’t have the whole aspect of fearing the inevitable loss of control and then dealing with the consequences the next day, or even the issue of how to kill a supernatural monster, simply doesn’t feel like a full werewolf movie. Also, as much as I can intellectually respect the puffy-faced, not extremely wolfy monster design… I can’t really get excited about it. I would rather come out thinking that was a cool monster than that monster makes sense if you think about it.

Another thing that’s hard to get around: no wolf fodder. The movie doesn’t feel tiny in scale, because there are all those woods, but when you think about it there are only a handful of characters, it’s mostly just set at this isolated cabin, there are no neighbors, so no body count.

It might be a matter of expecting the wrong thing. Whannell’s previous two movies as director have a two-pronged approach, in my mind. First they ask how they can reinvent this sort of story, then they ask ‘Now that we’ve set that up, what kind of cool shit can we do with it?’ I feel like WOLF MAN does some of the first part and isn’t really interested in the second part. It ends up being a fairly traditional (if simplified) werewolf movie, and other than the strong choices in how to depict his perspective it’s mostly the themes that Whannell seems invested in, and that stand out.

They are themes we’ve seen many times before, but I think Whannell at least has a different take on them than usual. Maybe the movie doesn’t agree with him, or admit it agrees with him, but usually a character like Blake would start to feel very emasculated. He’s out of work, he’s concierge to a pampered fairy princess, she puts lipstick on him, then his wife comes home from work from an occupation he can’t find work in and ignores him. He’s removed from his rugged upbringing, living in the city, then he goes back and can’t remember how to get around. His wife is shocked by the sight of a hunting rifle, very uncomfortable with it being in the car when they get lost and have to pick up Blake’s childhood friend Derek (Benedict Hardie, HACKSAW RIDGE) for help finding the property. There’s strong tension as Derek compliments their lifestyle but maybe backhandedly, and when he doesn’t ask Charlotte about herself so she volunteers, “I’m a journalist.”

The novel thing is I don’t think Blake comes off as embarrassed of any of this. He should be happy that Ginger doesn’t know what a hunting blind is, and calls it a treehouse. I think he knows, and the movie agrees, that he found a healthier life for himself and his kid. His problems all come from his father’s choices, and from briefly returning to his roots. His dad’s idea of protection does the opposite, tragedy ensues, Blake’s gentle relationship with his daughter prevents it from being even worse. City boy did a better job of protecting his family by keeping some of his true girl-dad self, not by finding the beast within or manning up or some shit. I wish I liked the whole movie as much as I like that notion.