By Variety | Created at 2025-01-18 00:28:05 | Updated at 2025-01-18 03:58:16
3 hours ago
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers about “Wolf Man,” now playing in theaters.
The new movie “Wolf Man” is director Leigh Whannell’s take on another Universal Monsters classic, following his successful spin on “The Invisible Man” in 2020. Much like that film, this new vision — co-written by Whannell and his wife Corbett Tuck — is filled with twists and turns that audiences won’t see coming. For a complete breakdown of the film’s plot, keep reading.
The movie starts in 1995, as a young boy named Blake (Zac Chandler) is hunting with his temperamental father Grady (Sam Jaeger) outside their remote Oregon home, when they start hearing strange noises and an animal stalking them. They climb up into a deer stand and shut the door, hearing the unnatural noises getting closer, and then eventually going away as Grady takes a shot at it. Later, Blake overhears his father telling a friend over the radio that evil is close and he needs to protect his son from it.
Cut to modern day, where Blake has grown up and is now played by “Girls” alum Christopher Abbott, most recently seen in last year’s “Kraven the Hunter.” He has a wife named Charlotte (Julia Garner) and a daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). Blake and Charlotte’s marriage is on the rocks, and he’s worried he’s channeling his strict father a bit too much while parenting. But he receives a letter alerting him that Grady, long missing, has officially been pronounced dead, and now the Oregon house is his.
Hoping to shake his family out of the slump, Blake convinces them to relocate temporarily from their lives in San Francisco to Oregon to enjoy nature. Unfortunately, things get off to a hairy start as soon as they get to the area, as they drive off the road to avoid hitting something. This puts their van in a precarious position which they have to escape by crawling through the windows. Yet Blake doesn’t leave unscathed, as he’s scratched by a beast that looks suspiciously lycanthropic.
Blake gradually grows into the titular Wolf Man, growing more hair, elongating his limbs and just generally looking ickier. But he’s still aware that he is the patriarch of the family, and he spends his time defending Charlotte and Ginger from the werewolf that bit him. Due to a telltale tattoo, it’s revealed that the evil werewolf is Blake’s long-lost father. The two Wolf Men face off and Blake bites open his father’s throat, killing him.
Yet that doesn’t lead to a happy ending, as Blake increasingly forgets his humanity as he turns more lupine. Soon, he is chasing Charlotte and Ginger around the property, unable to curb his hunger. Even a bear trap he steps in can’t stop him, as he chews off his foot and just starts bounding along on all fours.
Charlotte and Ginger climb up to the same deer stand that Grady and Blake escaped to at the beginning of the film, with Charlotte armed. As they wait, they hear Blake come up to the top, and just as he pokes his head over, signaling that he wants to die, Charlotte fires. At the film’s end, Charlotte and Ginger reflect on the beauty of the nature surrounding the cabin, as Blake had encouraged them to do as they left San Francisco for Oregon. Roll credits!
Watch the “Wolf Man” trailer below.
