As a monstrous icon, the Wolf Man has a relevance equal to that of Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster or the tragic duality Doctor Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. There is something that differentiates him, however, from these three creations – according to Stephen King in his essay macabre dancean essential triad to understand modern horror fiction—and the Wolf Man does not have a prestigious literary source behind him. It arises from a convoluted compendium of cultural references and influences, where the figure of the wolf as such is not even of great importance.
In his 1978 study Of Wolves and MenBarry Holstun Lopez states that the negative view of these animals is “almost entirely a projection of human anxieties.” “The wolf is not so much an animal we have always known as one we have imagined continuously”. When it comes to encrypting its cinematographic roots, this, however, does not seem enough and it could nevertheless be identified as a literary reference… through the novels of Bram Stoker and Robert Louis Stevenson. Although his adaptations have not insisted much on this aspect, the original Dracula from 1899 was also a werewolf, he had the ability to transform into a wolf. While the alternation of the human and wolf form refers to the drama of Doctor Jekyll in the 1886 novel.
The Wolf Man would emerge from this confluence to articulate itself as an entity inseparable from cinema, at a time when Universal Pictures had already begun to plunder classic horror novels. Dracula and Dr. Frankensteinthroughout the year 1931, had activated a mad productive machinery which in the first place would lead to the debut of a not particularly remembered lycanthrope —The human wolf of 1935—, and secondly to the definitive establishment of the icon with The werewolf 1941 film directed by George Waggner and starring Lon Chaney Jr.
This is the canonical werewolf—the one with Jack Pierce’s makeup, more like a boar than a wolf—and the introducer of a constant theme that is now being picked up again by Universal Pictures with the release of werewolf. It does so together with its subsidiary Blumhouse, which specializes in budget-friendly horror. And from the hand of a filmmaker, Leigh Whannell, apparently very suitable to respect the unexpected complexity that this figure has ended up monopolizing.
How to do justice to a myth
The creative impulse to develop The werewolf was once marked by opportunism: Universal simply wanted a film titled that way and screenwriter Curt Siodmark improvised with ingredients from previous films by the company. majorsuch as the European setting and the troubles surrounding the lineage of Talbot Castle. For David J. Skal, a horror scholar who sadly died last year, the vulgarity of the project did not prevent the definitive film from “weaving an unconscious parable of the war effort” just when the world was in the grip of World War II, “around “the werewolf’s frustrated attempts to control violent and irrational European forces.”
Classic monsters are invariably tied to powerful metaphors that channel concerns of their time while remaining susceptible to various updates. Skal’s hunch that The werewolf spoke about a Europe at war that stalked the United States – a country from which Larry Talbot arrived as a prodigal son – has not, on the other hand, managed to penetrate too much, in favor of other aspects of Siodmark’s salad such as the echoes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when there is a full moon and, above all, the turbulent father-son relationship between Larry and John Talbot (Claude Rains).
He werewolf Canonical cinema tells us, then, about distant relationships and paternal sins that end up paying for children who are incapable of repressing their violent impulses. It is what has penetrated the most, closely followed by allegories about puberty and juicy variations with female characters: already in 1942 we had The panther womanfrom which you can draw a straight line to a more recent cult title like Ginger Snaps. But sticking to the men wolf, the daddy issues have been present in both very free versions, eighties style teen wolf (where Michael J. Fox’s lycanthropy was due to paternal inheritance), as in direct rereadings of the original film.
This is what brings us back to Universal and how this Hollywood studio has managed poor Larry Talbot’s legacy. The werewolf of 2010 was a remake official film of the 1940s, with Benicio del Toro succeeding Lon Chaney Jr. The black and white photography and low budget preceded a sumptuous spectacle of crazy CGI and gore surprisingly abundant by a craftsman of the caliber of Joe Johnston (Honey, I’ve shrunk the kids). It was a very effective film that, even so, did not find its audience, and it was due to its poor performance at the box office that Universal thought of another way to update its catalog of monsters.
The werewolf of Johnston and Dracula: The Untold Legend They were then the first stones of the so-called Dark Universe: a franchise with which Universal wanted to emulate the success of Marvel Studios by chaining its monsters from the 30s and 40s throughout connected phases and films. As we know, the Dark Universe did not survive the failure of The mummy by Tom Cruise in 2017, but from then on Universal made the wise decision to hand the reins to independent authors to play at will with the illustrious rights it still owned.
This is how we have arrived at films as diverse as Renfield, The Last Voyage of the Demeter either Abigail adapting various facets of the Dracula myth—we could also include here the recent Nosferatu—, and, above all and what matters most to us now, to the work of Leigh Whannell. The co-creator of Saw confirmed that Universal had made the right decision in 2020 with its version of The invisible man: This film adapted the novel by HG Wells, articulating itself as a parable about sexist violence and magnifying its suspense with a very effective production, which took great advantage of the empty spaces and the anxiety of Elisabeth Moss as a harassed woman.
After its success, the logical thing was to put another monster in its hands, although this did not happen immediately: at first Universal commissioned a new film of The werewolf Ryan Gosling and his colleague Derek Cianfrance, appointed to star and direct respectively. Although Gosling has remained as executive producer, there is no trace of Cianfrance, Universal having once again turned to Whannell with the desire to replicate the impact of The invisible man. This wish, although werewolf is not at all a negligible film, it is far from being fulfilled.
A small and functional story
The wickers are not bad. Christopher Abbott is an actor known for Girls who in recent years has built a career full of strange and unclassifiable projects—titles like Piercing, The sanctuarytwo memorable villains for different reasons poor creatures and Kraven the Hunter—, and that in werewolf plays the titular character alongside Julia Garner (The Assistant), giving it intense vulnerability. His Blake Lovell is an unemployed father—Garner, on the other hand, is a successful journalist—who loves spending time with his daughter, although he is occasionally betrayed by fits of rage and the traumatic memory of his own father.
The plot of werewolf It takes place almost entirely in Blake’s old home in Oregon, where he has gone with his family after learning of his father’s mysterious death. Shortly after arriving they are attacked by a monster that forces them to seclude themselves within the four walls of the house, and as if the danger were not enough, Blake begins to experience a painful transformation due to the bite of the aforementioned monster. Whannell’s approach is that minimal. werewolf It lacks the scale of the werewolf’s previous misadventures and opts for a more realistic approach, nevertheless capable of assuming the different particularities of the myth as its own.
In this way we once again encounter the paternal inheritance that haunts Blake, bathed in some extra reminiscence to communicate the film with its contemporaneity. The memory of this authoritarian father – which focuses on an unnecessarily long prologue – survives beyond his link with lycanthropy, favoring an incipient conflict of the protagonist with his masculinity – a man relegated to the care of the home and his daughter, without being a hunter or supplier—, which in the end does not go beyond the brushstroke. werewolf It starts from there, from this possible desire to reconnect with a natural/wild order, to then delve into a lament for the lack of family communication.
This leads to the most attractive visual ideas of a film where, unlike what happened with The invisible manthere is little of that. The interest in Blake’s transformation does not lie then in the practical effects that anticipate the monster, but in how Whannell reflects the progressive difficulties of Abbott’s character in speaking with his family in such ominous moments. While the physicality of the metamorphosis seems lazy—something unforgivable in a cinematic tradition marked by the brilliant work of Rick Baker for An American werewolf in London—, Whannell prefers to attend to the subjectivity of the werewolf and his eventual alienation.
It is a firm decision against which the film folds organically. His approach doesn’t allow him to be bigger or more ambitious than he is, and yet Whannell’s lackadaisical staging is inexcusable. Contradicting its claustrophobic scaffolding, werewolf It is incapable of generating suspense, settled into a smallness that starts out seeming coherent and in the end is just dull and boring. This werewolf It only inspires compassion and psychoanalytical readings, which undoubtedly fits with the genealogy of the beast but is still disappointing when this beast has always been, above all, a purely cinematographic creation.
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