A troubled young married couple make the reluctant trip to Oregon. The man of the house, and a most dutiful dad, has found out that his father is officially deceased. The adult son now has to move the old man's things out of the remote house in the mountains. Only trouble is that the rental truck almost runs over a creature on a winding road and the family eventually makes it back to that house on foot, turns on the generator and, well, lycanthropy happens. Yes, Oregon, a werewolf is on the loose. If you are aware that the mountainous area near your childhood home has a werewolf nearby, would you go there? Not me. The hell with my father's belongings.
"Wolf Man" is the latest horror flick from director Leigh Whannell and he has some good ideas here with regards to lycanthropy, that is seeing it as a ravaging disease that eats you up bit by bit. Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) is the father who protects his daughter at any cost and that includes his father's domicile (the daughter is played by Matilda Firth, who is as cute as a button). Charlotte Lovell is the mother, a journalist (very thanklessly played by Julia Garner who fared better in "Weapons"), who is seemingly unhappy in the marriage yet never admits to it - her character also feels lost who can't reciprocate the love bestowed on their daughter by her husband. Nevertheless, Blake has been bitten by the werewolf during a hair-raising truck accident. He is slowly consumed by the wolf within and in his blood. I love how he scratches himself where he was severely bitten, or how he almost enters a fourth dimension where he can't comprehend his own family - words are like animal grunts to him, a nice touch. So we have two werewolves to deal with, a ham radio that doesn't function (no cell phone service out in these woods), the generator is a mess, and no time for love or making peace with Blake and Charlotte's marriage on the rocks.
"Wolf Man" skirts past any character development of any kind. We know something is amiss in the marriage and it is then forgotten. We know Blake doesn't want to yell at his daughter when she does something wrong, and that is all there is to that father-daughter dynamic other than they love each other. Once they arrive at the house, all hell has already broken loose and all we can do is wait for inevitable werewolf attacks. Director Whannell can direct the hell out of this film and he sets up fairly decent shocks and scares. Still, without an ounce of character personality beyond one dimension and a half, "Wolf Man" is slim shadings of a monster tale that might have been better as a half-hour anthology episode.
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