⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Rated R | 103 minutes

The latest in Universal’s reborn Universal Monsters films is perhaps the most unnerving of their modern entries yet. Thanks to 2020’s excellent The Invisible Man, director Leigh Whannell was chosen to submit a new volume in the storied classic monsters franchise by giving Wolf Man an entirely new nightmare.

What does it mean to be human? It’s different for everybody. To err is human, so they say. The film starts out with an on-screen blurb about a missing hiker and that the year is 1995. Locals have reported strange sightings of a ‘man with the face of a wolf’. Although that’s a bit heavy-handed with detail, we are quickly introduced to the childhood of the film’s protagonist Blake (Christopher Abbott) as his father asserts himself as the authority in his son’s life at their woodland home deep in the forests of Oregon. While there may not be any physical abuse present, the father’s militaristic style of childrearing sets young Blake on a path of fear. It’s a path that would ultimately lead him to leave home and promising to himself that he’d never be like his dad.

Thirty years have passed when we rejoin Blake as he’s walking through San Francisco with his young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), gushing lovey little phrases her way as she dotes all over him. It’s obvious right away that adult Blake is not his father’s son save for one small incident where we get a peek behind the curtain and learn that Blake is holding back some pent-up anger.

Blake’s wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) is a real go-getter journalist focused more on her work than her family. We can see it’s wearing on Blake as he gets a bit snippy with her when she comes home one evening and has a contentious phone call at the kitchen table in front of Ginger.

As Charlotte entered, she handed Blake an overnighted UPS letter pak. Inside is a letter and a set of keys. We learn that Blake’s estranged father has been legally presumed dead by the State of Oregon after a lengthy disappearance under suspicious circumstances. Blake decides this could actually be a great opportunity to bring his immediate family back together as a unit with a summer trip to his childhood home to pack up a truck of his father’s belongings.

What happens next is a bit predictable as the family loads up in a rental truck and sets off to the ‘cabin in the woods’… an all-too-common scenario for horror hijinks. However, Whannel uses the cabin setting to amazing effect in this film, building intense anxiety with the house essential as its own character.

It doesn’t take long for our family’s excursion to take a wrong turn. In what can best be described as an homage to the Ford Explorer scene in Jurassic Park, Blake’s family finds themselves dangling precariously off the ground with the truck held sideways in the treetops. Whannell uses this to his advantage with a most unsettling and disorienting camera move as the family struggles to get out of the truck before it falls and also escape whatever the heck they just saw in the road.

It fortunately doesn’t take long for them to find their way through the woods and to Blake’s childhood home. They race inside as some “thing” from the woods quickly closes in. As they barricade themselves in, Charlotte discovers that Blake has a nasty cut on his forearm. He says it must be from the broken truck window… but if you’ve seen a single zombie movie or any other werewolf film, you know where this is going. However, credit where credit is due, it’s the *how* we get there that’s unique here among wolf-man tales.

The director chooses to let the viewer witness Blake’s devolution into an unrecognizable creature the way Blake himself is experiencing it – his humanity is slowly and steadily being erased by whatever lupine virus has found its way into his system.

In a break from traditional werewolf lore, turning into a wolf is not an “only during a full moon” sort of situation in this story. It’s a permanent change and it’s savage. The use practical effects during his slow transition was exceptional, truly excellent award-winning visuals.

Blake slowly becomes more lethargic through the night, growing more and more grotesque with each camera shot; the things that made him human are fading away. The impact this has on Charlotte and Ginger is unmistakably terrifying. They’re losing their father and, maybe, their own lives.

Wolf Man is a fresh retelling of a story most people have heard at some point in their lives. But where that story is usually pretty stock and mythical in nature, this retelling is raw and real. Much in the way that diseases like Lupus and Alzheimers can rob people of their humanity and families of their loved one, Wolf Man tells the story of a similar fate…and it’s no less horrific.

Take your significant other see this film and be sure to hold them a little tighter after. While lives can change in an instant, sometimes there’s a much slower change that happens… one you’re powerless to stop. Even though there are some heavier themes present throughout the film, at its core, it’s still a solid creature-in-the-woods thriller that will leave your heart pounding in anticipation.

Wolf Man is in theaters January 17.