Wolf Man (2025)
4/10
Waited for this to stream on a channel I already pay for (Peacock) and glad I did. Would have been pissed if I’d paid to see it.
They basically dusted off the intended 2014 wolfman flick from Universal’s attempt to resurrect their classic monster franchise that was torpedoed by the Tom Cruise mummy movie a decade later.
Moves the action from whatever European area the 1941 original is set in to the modern day PNW and throws some Indian lore (in the form of an opening title card) into the mix. It’s roughly a mashup of the 1941 original The Wolf Man and its 2010 remake, and Werewolf of London (1935) with a few original ideas mixed in. Gone is the full moon presto-chango routine: once these guys flip it’s the lycan life forever. And they’re not confined to nocturnal adventures, they come out in the daytime as well. The makeup is more Henry Hull in Werewolf of London than Lon Jr.
The actors are not particularly attractive (other than the kid, who’s cute enough) nor are their characters anybody I really cared about, so I had trouble giving a shit if they had all died.
A house that has been vacant long enough for its owner to have been declared dead is in surprisingly good shape, machinery such as generators readily work and batteries in flashlights are still good. A city girl knows how to jump off a truck battery, set a steel trap and operate a hunting rifle, all of which creates barriers to suspension of belief. If you’re going to turn a man into an animal it works better in a setting where everything else squares with the real world.