Flasz On Film

When Mike Nichols was gearing up for the making of Wolf with Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer, he once opined that a werewolf was a lousy metaphor as it was a metaphor for something that just doesn’t happen to people. Granted, at this time he was struggling with a script that didn’t have much meat on the bone and once he enlisted Elaine May—his lifelong friend and collaborator—to work on the screenplay, she suggested that the movie would be very short because it was essentially a story about a guy who wants to turn into a wolf and he does. It took considerable work behind the scenes to carve some thematic depth into this movie, which only stands to confirm that werewolves as thematic vehicles are perhaps not the easiest to handle.  

Indeed, even though the very idea of a man turning into a wild beast at the earliest sight of the full moon potentially offers an opportunity to smuggle a metaphorical conversation underneath the superficial genre geekery of adding one’s own two cents to the canon of on-screen metamorphoses with clever special effects and makeup, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of wriggle room in there for a storyteller to move around. However, what’s already there—the ideas pertaining to such concepts as wresting with one’s own primal tendencies, working through suppressed emotions and embracing or rejecting change in life—might just be enough. And not to disagree with one of the preeminent forefathers of New Hollywood, but it might just be the case that werewolves can be metaphors for what happens to people… when given enough attention and treated with sufficient storytelling gravitas.  

Thus, Wolf Man directed and co-written by Leigh Whannell (who previously directed The Invisible Man and Upgrade) serves as a competent example of a modern genre aesthetic being applied to what would otherwise be an implementation of an archetypal narrative of the werewolf and embedding a compelling thematic conversation within it that works predominantly on a metaphorical level, while it also succeeds viscerally on the back of the viewer immersion. In a similar vein to how the classic archetype of The Invisible Man dating all the way back to H.G. Wells was turned into a searing study of obsession and paranoia that cuts right through the current zeitgeist, Wolf Man deconstructs the mythos of the werewolf and offers a conversation about masculinity, emotional vulnerability and the complexity of communication within the context of both a family unit and a committed relationship with a lot of mileage behind it.  

The movie reduces these multiple concepts into a simple narrative about a family of three, Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott), his wife Charlotte (Julie Garner) and their young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). We are introduced to their intriguingly fragile family dynamic methodically, as the filmmakers slowly—but not too slowly—allow us to understand the many demons haunting their existence. Charlotte is overworked and permanently overwhelmed by a sense of guilt that she doesn’t get to spend enough time with her daughter and consequently feels she is failing as a mother. Blake is “between jobs” and feels unappreciated and resentful; he seems helpless as he observes his family disintegrating in slow motion right in front of him. Both Charlotte and Blake wage internal battles they don’t admit to one another.  

However, we do get a glimpse into Blake’s mind as the film opens with a prolonged sequence set in Blake’s childhood when he lived in a remote farmhouse with his stern survivalist father. Whannell gives us just enough detail to paint a good enough picture of the kind of relationship Blake had with his father, from the “yes, sir—no, sir” enforced reverence to complete shutdown of emotional vulnerability espoused by this “man’s man” paternal figure who insists on teaching his son essential survival skills while completely neglecting the fundamental concepts relating to communication and expression of emotions. We see them go on a hunting expedition where they happen upon a mysterious predatory creature which nearly claims their lives. Blake’s father insists it’s a bear, but we all know it’s not the case because we are watching a film titled Wolf Man not Bear. However, what counts is that any conversation about the creature that clearly mortified young Blake is cut short because his father’s job, at least according to him, is not to communicate with his son but to protect him from the evils of this world.  

This brief introductory setup contextualizes our relationship with Blake and perhaps helps us understand why he occasionally snaps at his daughter when she misbehaves and why he immediately apologizes for losing his temper. Blake is a man who carries the unresolved emotional trauma of never confronting his father, who as we find out soon enough, had gone missing years ago and only recently was officially declared deceased by the state. This gives Blake an opportunity to at least try to understand the man he chose to sequester from his life, as he must now pay a visit to his childhood home. Before they even get the chance to wrestle with Blake’s past, the Lovells suffer an accident and end up stranded in the wilderness… stalked by a mysterious animalistic creature.  

Thus, the stage is set for the werewolf myth to be re-enacted as the Lovells have to run for their lives from a monster lurking in the darkness and seek refuge in the very house Blake had abandoned when he was old enough to escape. What’s particularly interesting about how Wolf Man handles these easily recognizable concepts is that they are all permanently tethered to the metaphorical plane of interpretation the movie wants us to concentrate on. In crisis, Blake and Charlotte’s relationship strains even further and the execution of genre staples like defending the house from a supernatural invader, seeing Blake visibly degrade and transform after he is attacked by the creature, or even how we get to witness his cathartic confrontation with the monster all serve a thematic purpose instead of simply being there because the genre template requires them to appear.  

Consequently, the movie—while consequently effective and viscerally engrossing in the moment and perhaps momentarily a bit too obvious for its own good—succeeds as a fully metaphorical conversation because each of its genre-specific elements carries an easily identifiable interpretation and lets the viewer burrow in the film’s fertile thematic topsoil. Blake barricading the door is an illustration of his inability to confront his past traumas and a kneejerk attempt to closet his emotions. His slow descent into madness and eventual transformation into a monster terrifying his family symbolizes his defeat against the overwhelming tidal wave of emotions that overpower his self-taught emotional restraint.  

This is a particularly resonant feature of the film which is bound to elicit a response from a great number of male viewers, and indeed this is how it reverberated with my own personal journey into adulthood having left a dysfunctional adolescence in my rearview mirror. Seeing Blake chastise himself for snapping at his daughter or the way he suffers with the way his family seems to be crumbling like a crouton in front of his eyes without him realizing that at least a part of the reason why that is has to do with his own emotional inaccessibility he had cultivated as a defence mechanism in his youth is depicted with great detail and appropriate sensitivity to the subject matter. Whannell extends this conversation further into a greater debate on communication between partners, which truly peaks in a phenomenal scene where we see Charlotte trying to understand the garbled speech of his afflicted husband before the camera changes its point of view and positions itself behind Blake. As it does so, the contrast sharpens, the color saturation changes, and Blake’s speech starts to make sense while Charlotte’s words turn into gibberish. It is an honestly great way to depict the complete failure of communication in a relationship going through a full-on existential crisis.  

I believe the ability to construct these subtle strokes of visual flair are Leigh Whannell’s strongest attributes as he has used similar ideas—memorable visual concepts encapsulating potent thematic messaging—in his prior work. Some of the most potent and lasting images from The Invisible Man, like the incredible sequence when Elizabeth Moss’s character fights against her invisible foe in the kitchen or how Whannell lingers on negative space as she inspects the loft of the house are just two of the many such examples. Wolf Man adopts similar philosophy to flesh out such fundamental ideas as men and women communicating and perceiving the world on different wavelengths and not being able to communicate in times of crisis. He also stoops to more familiar and unsubtle elements of symbolism in such moments as when Blake confronts the werewolf and finds out its identity. However, I still think that Whannell rides the fine line between accessible enough and way too obvious to give the viewer an impression of solving a riddle and uncovering potentially interesting thematic nodes hidden just under the epidermis of the narrative without condescending them in the process. 

Hence, I see Wolf Man as a resoundingly successful marriage of genre obligations with ambitions to use a perennial archetype to prove Mike Nichols wrong and indeed use the werewolf as a metaphor for something that does happen to people. It’s immediate, authentic and visceral in its depiction of body horror just as it is emotionally mature to handle its thematic headspace with requisite respect. The only major drawback I can think of—and it may have something to do with my personal expectations of where the movie was supposed to end up rather than anything else—comes at the very end of the film. This is because I am not sure it was the right move to leave the story with only a hint of redemption for its male protagonist, which is what I think he deserved based on his narrative arc. But at this point I’d be reviewing a movie I wish I had seen rather the one I did in fact see.  

Therefore, all I will say is that Wolf Man sees Leigh Whannell on form and offers a visually stimulating and emotionally assaultive experience that once again proves that horror can grow a brain when it wants to. And that Mike Nichols may have been a bit wrong about his thoughts on werewolves.