We’re Very Worried About The New Wolf Man
Attempts to resurrect the Universal monster movies have been uneven, with flops like the 2017 Mummy and hits like the 2020 Invisible Man. I hope Wolf Man will be another high point but after watching its first trailer I’m a little worried. The January release date and trailer both have me feeling like it could be a disaster.
A remake of the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. movie, the new Wolf Man is being produced by Blumhouse and released by Universal. Little about the movie’s plot has been revealed, except that it centers around a family being terrorized by a werewolf. It stars Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Sam Jager, and Matilda Firth.
I’d be fine with Wolf Man being a buried gem, but the trailer didn’t raise my hopes.
The first sign Wolf Man may be a disappointment is its release date of January 17, 2025. January is historically a bad time to release a movie and is well known as the month when studios dump movies they aren’t particularly confident in. Even if it turns out to be a great movie, its release in January could tank its box office results and cause it to become overlooked.
Both the trailer and the description seem painfully generic compared to the 1941 version of Wolf Man.
I’d be fine with Wolf Man being a buried gem, but the trailer didn’t raise my hopes. The only plot detail the trailer reveals, beyond the initial description, is that the father of the central family becomes a werewolf. The trailer mostly consists of menacing shots of the cast and partially obscured shots of werewolves, giving it a generic feeling.
The look of the werewolf in Wolf Man is my biggest concern after the trailer, which didn’t show the creature in full but seems to feature a mostly human-looking creature. A shot where the creature punches through a car windshield shows a hairy but otherwise human-looking arm. Another shot seems to depict a regular man moving like a wolf, which would be a disappointing depiction of the monster.
Both the trailer and the description seem painfully generic compared to the 1941 version of Wolf Man. The original movie had a sense of gothic grandeur and a tragic love story that made for a compelling drama and memorable setting. None of that is present in the trailer for the new version, which seems like a straightforward, unremarkable monster movie.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong about Wolf Man and it’s a much better movie than the trailer implies.
I’m also concerned that Wolf Man chose the wrong director to bring Universal’s classic werewolf into the modern age. Leigh Whannell proved he could update a classic Universal movie with The Invisible Man, but that movie was far more naturally aligned with the tone and aesthetics of his previous movies like Upgrade and the Saw franchise. His only supernatural horror experience has been with the Insidious franchise, which has a creeping dread quite different from the primal horror needed for a werewolf movie.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong about Wolf Man and it’s a much better movie than the trailer implies. Blumhouse has been on a role with great horror movies, and I think there’s a depressing lack of good werewolf movies, but right now, I’m skeptical. Even with all of my concerns, I’ll be checking the movie out when it releases on January 17 next year.
