It’s not unusual for filmmakers to give their cast movies as part of their prep, but writer-director Leigh Whannell took it a step further for Blumhouse werewolf movie Wolf Man.
“I had a film festival during pre-production,” he explains as we discuss the reboot of the 1941 Universal Monsters classic, The Wolf Man. “It was funny because we were shooting at this great studio in Wellington; it was brand new, and they had this amazing theater with a beautiful digital projector, and I wanted to take advantage of it. Usually, when I shoot a movie, I rent out a theater and have a night for the crew to watch a film that inspires what we’re doing. On Upgrade, I rented out a movie theater and showed The Terminator, and we had some food and drinks.”
“It’s always a bit of a party, but in this case, it was a way to bond the crew and say, ‘Look, this is what we’re trying to achieve on Wolf Man.’ I was able to do that every week. I’m looking right now at the Full Moon Film Club list of movies that I was showing the cast and crew. There was The Fly, Under the Skin, The Thing, Blue Valentine, The Shining, Little Children, and Amour. I told the cast and crew that there are pieces of what we’re trying to do with each of those movies, so that list of movies I just read you was the soup I was trying to create.”
Wolf Man sees Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner play young couple Blake and Charlotte Lovell, who, along with their daughter, head from California to Oregon after Blake’s missing father is declared dead and he inherits his childhood home. However, even before the family can get to the property, they are attacked by a werewolf who claws Blake’s arm. It’s not long before he starts to turn, and some horrible realities are unleashed. Wolf Man, which is rated R, lands exclusively in theaters on Friday, January 17, 2025.
With Wolf Man being set in Oregon, a hot spot for Sasquatch sightings, is there a chance that what people believe to be Bigfoot is actually something else and more in line with the lore behind his film?
“It’s interesting that you mention that because I was thinking about it too. No one else has mentioned that,” Whannell mulls. “When I was writing Wolf Man, I was almost treating it like I was writing a Sasquatch movie or a Bigfoot movie. I was thinking about these mountain communities where the people who live there are aware of something and know the rules around a legend, but they’re not making the outside world aware. That stuff was really something I was heavily leaning on and reading about when I was writing the movie, for sure.”
‘Wolf Man’ Leans Away From This Classic Werewolf Trope
Something Whannell, who also directed The Invisible Man and Insidious: Chapter 3, wanted to do with his retelling of this classic werewolf story was to look at it as more of an affliction than a curse.
“I knew pretty early on that I wanted it to feel very biological,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to lean into the witchcraft of everything. I didn’t want to have a man growing a snout, having the ears and the fur like a human being literally transforming into a wolf. That has been done well before, but it’s not what I wanted to do for this film. I felt like skin diseases such as leprosy that actually affect the person were more the touchstone for it. Having said that, I knew I was walking that tightrope of keeping the Wolfman fans happy and the horror fans. I didn’t want them to be disappointed and sacrifice their enjoyment of the film.”
“So Arjen Tuiten, the makeup designer, and myself were constantly going back and forth on what was too far and what was too much, and he was on board from the start. When I first talked to him and said, ‘I want to bring this into more of a disease-type angle,’ he said, ‘I’m in.’ It’s been his dream to do a Wolfman movie, so I felt like if Aryan liked it, then we’re cool.”
That’s where the Saw and Dead Silence writer says there is an opportunity to lean into the genre’s legacy of practical special effects as much as possible.
“If you ask people what they think about when they think of the Wolf Man, they’ll talk about the makeup, the transformation, that is what people know,” Whannell enthuses. “When adding a movie to that pantheon of Wolfman films, you must honor that tradition. You have to honor that tradition of great makeup, from Jack Pierce to Rick Baker. Werewolves have always had these transformations throughout cinema, and I couldn’t do it any other way.”
“I said to the producers from the very start, ‘We have got to do this practically. I really want to lean into the makeup special effects.’ Makeup is such a beautiful art form that I’ve always loved and been a fan of. In the world of Fangoria magazine and young horror fans, people like Rick Baker are rock stars, so I wanted to be part of that tradition.”
Something that is very different about Whannell’s Wolf Man from previous lycanthrope iterations is a shifting point of view from the human victims to the beastly protagonist. It’s presented as a form of thermal vision accompanied by muddled and indecipherable audio.
“That was actually the first idea I had when Universal first suggested Wolf Man,” the filmmaker explains. “That got my brain ticking, and I was pacing around in my office, thinking about a way into this character, and I came up with the idea of shifting perspectives and losing the ability to communicate with our loved ones. That felt like a good reason to make a movie. As you know, films take so much out of you, and they take so long you really need a fuel reservoir that will keep you going through all those peaks and valleys, all the way through editing, and usually, my fuel source on a movie comes from one concept.”
“On Upgrade, it was this idea of a human being sharing control of their body with a computer; he had quadriplegia and was using the computer to control his limbs. Suddenly, the computer says, ‘Well, I’m in control of everything from the neck down, not you,’ and that one idea is what carried me through everything. On Wolf Man, it was the shifting perspectives. I thought to myself, ‘Whatever I do on this movie, whatever fails or works or doesn’t work, I feel like that idea is strong.'”
Whannell ‘Saw’ An Opportunity On The ‘Wolf Man’ Set And Took It
However, Whannell admits that not everything in Wolf Man was planned out, including a moment that became a throwback shout-out to Saw, the movie that kickstarted his moviemaking career.
“I do like to insert little easter eggs here and there, but this was different,” he laughs, recalling a scene where Wolf Man has to find a way to free a trapped limb. “I actually felt that that scene worked organically, not as an homage, but as a moment in itself, and I felt like I hadn’t seen it in a Wolfman movie. It wasn’t until I was on set and the props person handed me a chain that I thought, ‘Wow, this is very self-referential in a good way.’ I felt like it was a full circle moment, as if the film I was making last year was talking to the first film I was ever involved with and saying, ‘Yeah, you did good. We’re still here. We’re still making things.’ I didn’t go into it going, ‘Ah, this will be a great homage,’ but I thought of it as just a great Wolf Man scene.”
Whannell co-wrote Wolf Man with his wife, Corbett Tuck. Although she has previously had roles in his movies, they have never collaborated in this capacity before. Did the partnership add an extra layer to the couple at the heart of the film?
“A lot of the time, there’s a certain thing that can happen as a screenwriter where part of it might feel fraudulent,” he explains. “Maybe other screenwriters don’t feel this, but when you’re writing for another culture, or if you’re writing someone who is not the same race or gender as you, there might be a time where you feel like, ‘Am I getting this right?’ What was great about writing about this married couple with Corbett was that she held me accountable. She was coming in and saying, ‘No, I feel like Charlotte would never say or do this.’ It’s all subjective, but I love that I had her point of view on this. It’s not a movie like Marriage Story, where the entire film focuses on the dynamics of the relationship and the psychology. With a movie like this, we’re giving it less screen time, but that doesn’t mean we were any less hard on it.”
As with his acclaimed and lucrative previous Universal Monsters reimagining, The Invisible Man, Whannell sees Wolf Man as a standalone movie. However, he’s aware that there’s a world beyond his vision and wants audiences to remember that.
“I was thinking a lot about this isolated community, what they’re hiding and what’s out there, and treating it as a virus. I do think there’s more of that story left untold, not so much in terms of a sequel, but in terms of the movie that exists now,” he muses. “There’s a lot you’re not seeing. There’s a whole hidden world there, so I’m not sure about a sequel, but I absolutely agree that there could be a Wolf Woman or another Wolf Man running out there in the hills.”
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