When his long-missing father is finally declared dead, Blake (Christopher Abbott) and his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth), head out to the old man's farm in Oregon. Along the way they nearly run over a feral creature who appears to be at least partly human. This creature keeps attacking the farmhouse even as Blake begins to transform into a wolf-like version of himself who can no longer understand English just as his wife and child can no longer understand him. Now Charlotte and her daughter face terrible danger from two sources, the carnivorous monster outside and her husband, who is slowly mutating into something just as dangerous ...
Leigh Whannell, who wrote and directed the creditable Invisible Man, doesn't hit one out of the ballpark with this new picture. Despite attempts to make this some kind of family drama -- Charlotte is bothered by the fact that her daughter has bonded more with her father than with her -- Wolf Man, despite some exciting moments, just never catches fire. The acting is good, but you're never really on the edge of your seat, and the plot is just too insubstantial. Another problem is that the film is seriously underlit during several key sequences, further blunting the impact. An interesting aspect is that when a neighbor who tries to help the family gets attacked by the monster, the little girl asks if he survived, but not the mother. Not one of the more memorable werewolf pictures.
I had a feeling this would not be good. Most wolf man movies aren't for some reason. Too bad, I really like Christopher Abbott as an actor (recently, he was great in that low budget movie with Margaret Qualley called Sanctuary).
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I will have to check out Sanctuary, as Abbott is a good actor. But this flick was a big disappointment.
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