Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner in Horror Redo

If you found Joe Johnston’s disabled 2010 vehicle for Benicio del Toro, The Wolf Manmired in gothic melodrama, finicky folklore and CGI excess, then the relatively straightforward storytelling of Universal’s latest return to the Monster Movie Hall of Fame, Wolfmanmight be more to your liking. This isn’t a reimagining on the level of Leigh Whannell’s previous foray into classic horror vaults, The invisible man. But there is no shortage of intensity or gore, not to mention the effectiveness in the way the scenario isolates a fragile family unit before plunging it into lycanthropic chaos.

Confining all but a few scenes to the unique setting of an old farmhouse and barn nestled in the isolated forests of Oregon gives Wolfman the claustrophobic feel of a COVID hangover movie. Which is both a strength and a limit. But Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner do an excellent job of upping the fear factor as their characters’ strained marriage is tested by a growing crisis of bloodletting and flesh-biting.

Written by Whannell with his wife, actress Corbett Tuck, this contemporary tale dispenses with most of the usual staples associated with the lupine legend since Lon Chaney Jr.’s original 1941 version written by genre master Curt Siodmak – no full moon, no money. ball, no fortune tellers and no flowering wolfsbane. The closest thing to a mythical dimension is opening text revealing that a hiker has gone missing in central Oregon and is believed to have contracted an animal virus known to local indigenous people as “wolf face.” “.

Whannell and Tuck focus more on family tensions by removing most external narrative elements, focusing on the fragile relationship of a seemingly mismatched couple as husband Blake (Abbott) undergoes alarming changes and wife Charlotte ( Garner) is forced to make split-second decisions. to protect themselves and their young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). Setting the main action during a single harrowing, foggy night was a wise choice.

The actors keep us invested in their fates throughout, even if the storyline is a little psychologically thin. There is nothing that can compete with the distressing underpinnings of domestic violence that have made The invisible man redo so scary. Even so, it’s quite captivating – a mid-level Blumhouse entry rather than top-tier, bolstered by Whannell GM Stefan Duscio’s swirling camerawork and disorienting angles, by a choppy soundscape of elemental menace and a harrowing orchestral score from Benjamin Wallfisch, who is his own kind of wild beast. It also helps that the focus is on practical effects and not CG.

Blake’s inner demons are implanted in a prologue during which we meet him as a preteen (Zac Chandler). He’s dragged out of bed to go hunting with his tough-guy, militaristic father Grady (Sam Jaeger), whose howls of trying to keep his son safe are almost as frightening as the snarling beast that seems to be stalking them. They climb a tree to hide in a rickety deer shelter, but the still-unseen creature draws nightmarishly closer, leaving behind a huge claw mark carved into the structure’s door.

Thirty years later, Blake is a “between-jobs” writer, married to Charlotte and living in San Francisco, where she is increasingly focusing on her journalism career. This means that Blake spends much more time with precocious Ginger than with her mother, making Charlotte feel like an outsider.

When Blake receives official confirmation from Oregon state authorities that the long-lost father he feared was dead, he suggests that Charlotte and Ginger go there with him while he prepares the family farm. Charlotte is hesitant, but Blake believes that the stunning view from the valley near where he grew up will help heal their frayed relationship.

Driving in the dark after getting lost, Blake is startled by the sudden appearance of a figure standing in the headlight beams, causing him to run off the road and crash the rented moving truck. Panicked by the sounds of a wild predator and evidence of the carnage it can cause, the three of them run toward the house, barely making it through the door when the creature closes in on them. Whannell once again limits our vision to a quick blur in the background.

Charlotte and Ginger are understandably petrified, but their fear turns to anxiety when they discover a deep gash in Blake’s arm. He soon begins to show signs of some sort of feverish illness, visible in his eyes, skin and teeth, but also in his heightened senses. In one breathtaking sequence, what appears to be the sound of a large animal’s paws scurrying across the roof turns out to be something much harder to imagine.

With no phone service to contact the outside world, the family is stuck there, safe from the outside predator as Blake’s horrifying physical transformation progresses right in front of them. Little by little, he loses the ability to speak, no longer able to communicate or understand his wife and daughter. When he starts biting off large chunks of his own injured arm, they get really scared.

Playing a wounded man, Abbott excels at brooding intensity but also the softer side of someone emotionally scarred by a horrible childhood. He throws himself with anguished physical and mental pain into the half-man, half-beast spiral as Blake – continually adding new layers of prosthetics – struggles to reconcile the urge for blood with the lingering feelings in his confused mind for his family.

The only cheesy element is what the filmmakers call “wolf’s vision,” allowing us to see Charlotte and Ginger through Blake’s eyes, like unknown figures silhouetted in a luminescent haze. The effect looks cheap, which makes you wonder if the burgeoning werewolf hasn’t had his retinas burned by too many glitchy videos.

Even with a few missteps and disappointing dialogue, the tension remains generally high, especially once Blake’s protective instincts resurface long enough to help them fend off the initial threat – involving a surprise revelation that many will see coming. Only when this conflict gets closer does Whannell give us a good look at the creature in one of several amped-up jump scares.

Garner’s character initially seems underwritten, but she becomes more compelling once the thoughtful and resourceful Charlotte is forced to fight, and there are touching suggestions that she rediscovers her love for her husband as he slips away from her . Firth does a good job in a standard child-in-peril role, and she is touching as Ginger struggles with the belief that the father she adores is still out there somewhere.

Whannell has cited pre-CG horror of the 1980s as an influence, namely David Cronenberg. The fly and that of John Carpenter The thingnoticeable in the shape-shifting scenes as Blake’s bones crack and contort and his skeleton shifts.

Anyone who goes back far enough to remember the era-revealing thrills of visceral transformation effects in Joe Dante’s film The howl or that of John Landis An American werewolf in London – Rob Bottin and Rick Baker were revolutionary effects wizards in 1981 – might judge the latest iteration to be low on fresh juice. (It’s not just me who finds terrorized nuclear families a bit bland.)

But there’s something fundamentally satisfying about classic monster tales nonetheless, and Whannell has a good enough handle on primal fears to keep it going. Wolfman amusing. Besides, if you ever doubted whether an animal could actually chew off a limb to escape a trap, you won’t wonder again.