You know a family getaway has gone south when the father starts chowing down on his forearm.
That’s what happens when Dad gets scratched and infected by a werewolf in “Wolf Man,” a dreary monster movie that offers nothing in the way of surprise or fun.
Directed by Leigh Whannell (“The Invisible Man”), it stars Christopher Abbott as Blake Lovell, a writer “between jobs”; Julia Garner, as his journalist wife, Charlotte; and Matilda Firth as Ginger, the couple’s young daughter.
The Lovells are living in San Francisco when Blake inherits a remote farmhouse in central Oregon from his missing-and-declared-dead father.
“Why don’t we all go up there together?” he suggests. “… It will be good for us.”
Uh-huh.
So they head out there for a visit to clear their heads – or whatever it is people do out in the wilds of Oregon.
They haven’t even made it to the farmhouse, though, when they and some “Deliverance” reject they’ve just encountered are attacked by a mysterious forest critter. Blake gets that bad scratch, but the family makes it to the farmhouse before the monster can mutilate them.
What follows is a long night. Dad starts getting the sweats (he looks like a feverish George Maharis at this point), losing teeth, appearing more hirsute and becoming, um, less articulate. The beast outside keeps trying to break in. Lots of screaming ensues.
Dad’s changing, and not in a good way, in “Wolf Man,” starring, from left, Julia Garner, Christopher Abbott and Matilda Firth. (Universal Pictures)
Soon Charlotte and Ginger are running around playing hide-go-seek with their tormentors.
And then it all ends, pretty much how you think it will.
Meanwhile, Whannell and his co-writer, Corbett Tuck, try to inject more meaning into the proceedings.
The film opens 30 years in the past, with Blake’s father, Grady (Sam Jaegar), taking young Blake hunting in the forest surrounding the farmhouse. Grady teaches Blake survival skills, but he keeps losing his temper when the boy doesn’t listen to directions.
As we jump to the present, we hear Blake – long estranged from his father – often telling Matilda, “It’s my job to protect you,” essentially repeating Grady’s words to him all those years ago. Matilda clearly adores Blake, but he, too, has a temper, and his marriage to hard-working Charlotte is struggling. It doesn’t take a great imagination to guess that her career overshadowing his could have something to do with their marital difficulties.
So, is “Wolf Man” an allegory for men, frustrated in their attempts to live up to their versions of manhood, becoming monsters – through alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic abuse, etc.?
Probably.
Does this make the movie any more interesting?
Not really. * (out of four)
** Click here for Tim Miller’s previous movie columns for Cape Cod Wave **
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Tim Miller, Movie Critic
Tim Miller is co-president of the Boston Society of Film Critics and a Tomatometer-approved critic. He teaches film and journalism at Cape Cod Community College in West Barnstable. You can contact Tim at [email protected] or follow him onTwitter @TimMillerCritic. Or you can ignore him completely.
