There is a line towards the end of The Wolfman (2025) when a character says (regarding the aforementioned Wolfman): He just wants it to be over.
In the theater, I muttered, too loudly: Forget him,I want this movie to be over!
That got a chuckle from the only two other people in the cinema, so I considered it a win.
Seriously, though, the reason I wanted to share that story is twofold:
One, it makes me sound like I’m a really funny guy.
Two, this movie was awful and I do not recommend that anyone see it. Ever.
Since I did a review of the unproduced draft of The Wolfman (HERE) I thought I would swing back by and share my thoughts on the movie. Sadly, the movie is not much better than the script, so buckle in.
Before I get into the film, I just want to say that I’m a big Leigh Whannell fan. The guy has been described as Horror Royalty, and rightly so. He co-created both the Saw franchise, and the Insidious franchise (both of which have dedicated fanbases) and has done some really great directing work on things like Upgrade (2018) and The Invisible Man (2020). And that’s to say nothing of his work on cool things like Dead Silence (2007). Plus, he seems like a pretty cool bloke (to coin a phrase from his native Australia).
Which is why it is so heartbreaking to announce that his take on Wolfman is so… toothless and bland. To put it nicely.
This thing is total garbage in almost every way, and it reminds me a lot of Shane Black’s The Predator (2018) which was another massive misfire from a really talented writer/director. I have a theory I shared with The Boys (as Hank calls myself, 3Way, and The Captain) that Wolfman (2025) was butchered by the studio, but that doesn’t totally hold up because I struggle to see even a glimmer of a unique idea or a better plot buried in the final film.
Where to even begin with this review? At the start, I suppose, because that’s the first hint that you’re in for a rough ride.
Before we get any werewolf action, or scares, or anything else, we get what all horror movie fans crave: a wall of text!
The text explains the origins of the werewolf, just in case you walked into a movie titled “Wolfman” and thought: Oh, boy! I wonder what this thing is about!
Then, we get about 15 minutes of exposition – a young boy (Blake – I only got that from IMDB because I’m not even sure they ever say his name in the film) and his abusive dad are out hunting. They see something that spooks them, and they run into a deer blind to cower for a few minutes.
Seriously, that is all that happens in the introduction. Pacing is just one of the many, many issues with this film. It also feels like a three hour slog, even though the thing is only one hour and forty-three minutes (according to IMDB). But I watched both Dune movies this past holiday, and both of those two and a half hour things felt much shorter than this.
Then, we flash forward several years, and meet a workaholic mom (Julia Garner), her out-of-work husband (Christopher Abbott), and their daughter (Matilda Firth). I don’t know who Julia Garner’s agent is, but she should really consider getting a new one because she’s been cast in two back-to-back horror stinkers (Apartment 7A and this). If you’ve seen her work in Ozark, you know Julia Garner can act. But both of these recent projects were so bad that even she couldn’t save them.
Anyway, eventually the husband (a grown-up version of the kid from the introduction) gets a letter that his dad has been missing so long that he has been officially declared dead and so the dad’s house is now his. So, because he and his wife are having problems, Blake (Christopher Abbott) suggests that they all go visit the creepy home where he was traumatized when he was little. And everyone thinks this is a fantastic idea!
Having marital problems? There’s no better place than the creepy murder-house in the middle of nowhere to work them out!
Anyway, these rocket scientists pack everything up and take their young daughter with them out to the woods. Also, Blake doesn’t remember where the house is exactly, and can’t check his GPS because there is no signal (because horror movie rules). So, they stop and ask the resident creep they find hanging out alone in the woods. The creep immediately hops in their U-Haul, and offers to direct them to the house.
On the way, the creep mentions that they shouldn’t be out after dark because werewolves.
So, then it gets dark.
Which leads me to wonder: how far away from the house were they? Like, it’s the middle of the day when they stop to ask the creep for help, and then it’s suddenly nighttime. So… what happened? Wouldn’t the creep want to be home safe long before the sun sets? What was his plan? Was he just going to crash with the family? I don’t think that would have gone over well…
But who cares? Logic is for squares and hippies.
Before long, they get attacked by the wolfman. Actually, the wolfman just stands in the middle of the road, and the dad swerves to avoid him because he looks so much like a human. That’s another issue with the film – the wolfman transformation looks horrible. It doesn’t resemble a wolf at all, it’s not spooky, and the makeup and effects in the 1941 version look so much better. Also, they totally ignore any wolfman lore. Like, the full moon has nothing to do with the transformation, and, apparently, it doesn’t even need to be dark for these guys to wolf-out (that’s not a sexist comment, there are only male wolf creatures featured in this film).
Also, if the dad hadn’t swerved, or if he had been reaching for his phone, or if he was just really competitive and wasn’t going to lose the game of chicken that the werewolf was playing with him, this all could have been over before it began. Yeah, these werewolves are weak to everything, not just silver, so a U-Haul racing down a dirt road would have been more than enough to take wolfie out.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, so the dad swerves so hard that he flips the U-Haul and manages to get it stuck in a tree. Not sure how he managed that since it was dark, the editing was pretty awful, and I had already checked out by this point, but that’s where we ended up: with a U-Haul lodged way up in a tree.
I’ll give you the cliff-notes of this next part because it seemed to take forever: the creep gets pulled away and eaten off-screen. That’s another complaint that I had: there is hardly any gore. I mean, it’s an R-rated Wolfman movie! From the guy who co-created Saw! It wouldn’t have to be a splatterfest, but they should have given us something. I mean, at least a cool mauling or two. But, alas, there is none of that.
So, the creep is gone – and he will not be missed. The dad gets scratched, which is enough to get him infected. And then he, the mom, and the daughter run to the grandad’s house that they were apparently very close to this whole time. Once they get there, they lock the wolfman out. I thought this was dumb, since the wolfman could just jump through a window, but someone I went with pointed out that there were bars on the windows to prevent this.
Now, here is another problem. I know we needed to get to the house and have the family survive long enough to drag this out to 90+ minutes, but how did that happen? Later, we get to see things from the Wolf’s perspective, and we know that these creatures have heightened senses, strength, and speed. So, why and how did a wounded guy, his wife, and his young daughter manage to get away from the creature?
I guess it’s because the wolfman was having a three-course meal of creep and was more focused on the food in front of him, but I still don’t buy it.
Once the family is inside, the dad starts transforming. And we get to see two very compelling auditions for the “Worst Parent of the Year.” Why, you may ask? Allow me to give but a brief sample:
1. The Mom leaves the daughter alone upstairs with her very infected Husband who has literal pieces of flesh falling off of him. Also, there is a violent creature outside trying to get in and the Dad is in no condition to fight it off.
2. Both Mom & Dad leave the daughter alone upstairs, with an infected monster just outside and still trying to get in, so they can go down to the basement and have a heart-to-heart about why their marriage is falling apart.
3. The Dad starts dying from some mysterious illness, like, he’s on his last legs at this point, and the Mom allows her daughter to hug, and touch the Dad like nothing was wrong with him. Also, they never wash their hands or use hand sanitizer. As someone who lived through a pandemic, there were so many stupid red flags that just kept popping up every single time a character would do something related to this unknown disease.
I won’t go too much more into the plot, because there really isn’t any plot to speak of from here on. The rest of the film goes like this:
Dad is dying. Mom decides they need something outside of the house. The family tries to make a run for it, it doesn’t work, and they race back inside before the werewolf can get them.
Rinse and repeat for what felt like hours.
Also, late in the film there is a reveal regarding the identity of the werewolf that attacked them (although it is so obvious that everyone saw it coming from a mile away). This is shown to us visually at first. However, because the writers didn’t trust the audience to understand this very obvious reveal, they have the mom basically turn to the camera and spell it out.
And then it just ends. It just kind of cuts to black, leaving the audience to regret every life decision that brought them to that moment and wishing they had their time and money back.
*Look, I know I used this image in my Wolfman script review, but it’s funny and it fits.
I hate to say it, but this is an AVOID AT ALL COSTS. It’s not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s not too far off, and it’s certainly one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever sat through.
Here’s hoping that Mr. Whannell’s next movie will earn back some of the goodwill he’s built up over the years.
What did you think of Wolfman? Did you like it more than I did? Let me know in the comments below!
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