Writer-director Leigh Whannell is a master of horror. His foray into the iconic monster stable with Invisible Man has become an essential film for understanding how I relate to abuse on film. With Wolf Man (2025), Whannel uses a transformation to highlight a cycle of violence the titular character can only hope to break. Produced by Blumhouse, the film is co-written by Corbett Tuck and written and directed by Whannell and stars Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner and Sam Jaeger, Matilda Firth, Benedict Hardie, Ben Prendergast, and Zac Chandler.
Wolf Man (2025) stars Golden Globe nominee Christopher Abbott (Poor Things, Bring Them Down) as Blake. Living in San Francisco, he’s a devoted husband and father who left behind a life in Oregon. He cut off his father when he got the chance to leave home and hasn’t returned since. But when he receives a document that tells him that his missing father is finally declared dead, he has to go home.
Inheriting his remote childhood home in rural Oregon childhood home, he has to go back. With his marriage to his workaholic wife, Charlotte (Emmy winner Julia Garner), fraying as they spend more and more time apart, Blake convinces her to drop work and come to the farm with him and their young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). When they get lost on the way to the farmhouse, something appears in the middle of the road.
Driven off the farm road, the family is relentlessly attacked by an unseen animal. To survive, they barricade themselves in Blake’s childhood home. As the unknown creature prowls the perimeter of the house, Blake begins to act strangely.
He sweats, his wound refuses to heal, his teeth are falling out, and his voice leaves him completely. As Blake begins to transform into something entirely unrecognizable, Charlotte is forced to make a choice. She has to contend with losing her husband to the monster he is becoming inside of the house, or she loses her entire family to danger on the outside. In the end, though, lethality is subjective.
Wolf Man’s thematic approach attempts important commentary but gets lost in its weight.
Wolf Man opens with ominous on-screen text about a sickness known to affect people in the hills of Oregon. While Oregonians describe it as “hill fever,” the opening notes that the Indigenous tribes of the area call it the “Face of the Wolf.” This is a small note, but the expository script feels out of place—something tacked on out of a studio necessity, perhaps.
Additionally, the inclusion of an Indigenous equivalent, like an explanatory column, sticks out like a sore thumb and is never meaningfully engaged with. On the one hand, this makes sense, given that the film takes place over one night, but on the other hand, it feels like lip service and a checkbox instead of something thoughtfully included.
Leigh Whanell showed that he was skillful and thoughtful when he portrayed the deep impact of intimate partner violence in Invisible Man. His incredible take on the classic Universal Monster was one of the most realistic depictions of domestic abuse I’ve seen on screen. Why? Because Whanell didn’t shield his audience from any of it—not from the gaslighting, the manipulation, and the physical abuse.
Wolf Man is missing that bite. Here, we can infer that child abuse in some way or shape took place in Blake’s childhood. More importantly, we can see that despite his transformation into a literal monster, Blake is fighting his new instinct to harm those close to him. The metaphor isn’t lost on me and I would bet it’s not lost on anyone in the audience. Still, Wolf Man refuses to show its fangs, to make us uncomfortable, or to understand that every choice you make to leave the cycle of violence is one you dedicate your life too.
The film’s pacing is largely to blame for the disconnect we see throughout the film. The message gets buried in a speedrun to transformation, and we don’t get to hear or see Blake talk about his father outside of the opening scene and a couple of words at the dinner table. Are we to infer that Blake was abusive like his father, hiding it under the surface? Had the “sickness,” as the film calls it, worked its way into their lives before the transformation began? Or are we to understand that Blake’s dedication to protecting his daughter is enough to tell us that he has never raised his hand in anger?
Wolf Man’s themes are muddied by subtlety in each act.
In some ways, Whannell and Tuck leave that up to us. We see a brief moment when he snaps at his daughter and one when he tells his wife that they aren’t okay and convinces her to go on the trip to his father’s farm in Oregon against her better judgment. But we also see how much Charlotte and Ginger aren’t afraid of Blake even as the monster takes hold.
Who Blake is on the inside is too amorphous to latch onto, which strips him of agency, especially with the choice to turn him nonverbal halfway through the film. While there is an attempt to show the audience Blake’s point of view, it never fully connects and instead feels like a section from another movie and not the one we’re watching.
Much of the film’s larger theme is hidden in the “what ifs” and the “maybe this” of Wolf Man’s narrative to make any real impact. When you know men who have witnessed their mothers be abused or were abused themselves, they almost always share their resolve to not be like their fathers. They verbalize it and choose every day not to be like them. And yet, Wolf Man’s muddiness makes the monstrosity seem like the inevitable. No matter what Blake does, no matter what men do, they will wind up controlled like their fathers.
Having known men touched by the type of violence the film gnaws at, it’s a disservice to leave all of Blake’s struggle silent and alluded to. It’s a disservice to leave him grunting and chewing on a bone in the corner. By trying so hard to shield its audiences from showing any child abuse or discussing it wholesale, Wolf Man refuses to reach its subject or showcase what I assume its ending message is: You don’t have to be your father. You can choose to protect instead of harm.
The openness of Blake’s actions as the titular character in the film’s finale leaves too much up in the air and allows the audience to map their own ending. At the same time, this can work. Subject matter, such as what the film engages with, needs to be tackled head-on instead of dodged. Given the film’s excellent effects work and dedication to body horror, the pulled punch also rises as a missed opportunity.
Christopher Abbott is superb as the titular Wolf Man.
The best elements of Wolf Man (2025) are when it is gross and violent and doubles down on a transformation that deals with the same kind of disgust you felt watching The Fly for the first time. It’s astounding, unnerving, and grotesque to see. And more importantly, Christopher Abbott is fantastic under that makeup. Abbott’s ability to act with his body is an exquisite part of the film. The physicality he brings to the role is what snaps it into place.
Abbott’s performance is a standout that carries the film even when it lulls. While his performance as a mother who worries about not knowing how to be one is also noteworthy, Abbott consistently overshadows her, both in and out of makeup. Part of this is due to how one-dimensional she is written and how quickly the film moves from scene to scene.
Additionally, Wolf Man (2025)’s set design is absolutely engrossing. The use of darkness, light, and the small sections of a frame almost out of sight is masterful. The sound design builds an ample amount of dread that turns Blake’s transformation into something disgustingly great to watch. There are highlights in Wolf Man, even if its narrative doesn’t really come together.
I know that I ripped through Wolf Man (2025); it’s not a terrible film or a bad one. It’s an intimate look at a family and what happens when it’s forced to look at the past and decide on its future. The film embraces a difficult subject matter. Despite its inability to stick the landing with its delivery, the attempt is admirable and showcases what made monsters so salient for all these years.
Monsters are the worst part of ourselves but aren’t our entire self. Across his two films, Whannell has asked us to stare into the pieces of our lives these horror movies touched and for the audience to grant grace, empathy, and understanding for the victims at their core. Leigh Whannel is extraordinary as a filmmaker, showing his consistency across his filmography. This keeps me so excited for any other explorations into monsters he may take, even if I find myself lukewarm on Wolf Man (2025).
Wolf Man (2025) tries to explore humanity but winds up losing its teeth instead. Still, with a powerful performance from Christopher Abbott and stellar use of lighting and practical effects, the muddied messaging shouldn’t keep the film from being added to any watchlist.
Wolf Man (2025) is playing now, exclusively in theaters.
Wolf Man (2025)
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6/10
TL;DR
Wolf Man (2025) tries to explore humanity but winds up losing its teeth instead. Still, with a powerful performance from Christopher Abbott and stellar use of lighting and practical effects, the muddied messaging doesn’t keep the film from being added to any watchlist.