A family at a remote farmhouse is attacked by an unseen animal, but as the night stretches on, the father begins to transform into something unrecognizable.

‘Wolf Man’ is the latest movie from Leigh Whannell, who after delivering a successful reboot of ‘The Invisible Man’, has taken on the task of rebooting another of Universal’s classic monsters in the Wolf Man (previously seen in a 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. movie. The story on this occasion centres on Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) and his New York based family (Julia Garner, Matilda Firth), who travel to the Montana wilderness upon confirmation of his father’s death to settle his estate, only to discover more than they bargained for in the surrounding woods.

I thought the early parts of the film were effective in setting up the story, building to a nice jump scare shortly after the family arrive in Montana to go alongside the sense of foreboding that is well established, but ‘Wolf Man’ stutters after this and doesn’t develop as well as I’d hoped it would. Whannell is very focused on the metamorphosis aspect, and for fans of body horror, there are things to enjoy here, but the issue is it doesn’t really do a huge amount else beyond this with fairly obvious plot developments and a lack of good scares. It’s clear Whannell is trying to make this a more emotionally grounded movie than previous monster horror features, but I felt it was lacking something to really draw you into the story.

The performances are good, with it nice to see Julia Garner back in the woods after ‘Ozark’, Matilda Firth delivering a good child performance, and Abbott covering the different facets of his character well, but ‘Wolf Man’ turns out to be a bit disappointing after that initial promise unfortunately.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Leigh Whannell

Starring: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth and Sam Jaeger

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4216984/