Film Review: WOLF MAN (2025): Lackluster Creature Feature Picks Up a Little Steam Towards the End

Wolf Man Review

Wolf Man (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Leigh Whannell, written by Corbett Tuck and Leigh Whannell and starring Julia Garner, Christopher Abbott, Leigh Whannell, Sam Jaeger, Matilda Firth, Benedict Hardie, Ben Prendergast, Milo Cawthorne and Zac Chandler.

Leigh Whannell’s disappointing monster movie, Wolf Man, works under the assumption that less is more but, in this particular case, that theory is debunked by the film’s tedious pace and lack of compelling characters. Julia Garner is totally miscast and wasted in the movie as Charlotte, the wife of a man named Blake (Christopher Abbott). Since the movie’s principal star is Abbott and Blake spends most of the movie transforming into a wolf man, Garner is pretty much in the background as her character tries to protect her daughter, Ginger (a terrific young actress, Matilda Firth), from another wolf lurking around an abandoned home in Oregon. Creature features don’t get more threadbare than Wolf Man and that’s a shame because the visual effects are decent, and the actors try hard. Too hard.

The movie opens with a young Blake (Zac Chandler) learning some harsh realities while out deer hunting. The movie skips ahead to an older Blake making conversation with Ginger in the big city. Ginger wants Blake, her dad, to buy her ice cream but Blake knows when he’s being manipulated when Ginger tells him how much she loves him. Blake and Charlotte talk, and it seems that the way to get over the slumps they are facing in their current lives is to take Ginger to the middle of nowhere in Oregon.

Right from the start, disaster happens. They meet a jerk named Derek (Benedict Hardie) and then their vehicle swerves into the trees when Blake believes to see a man who he wants to avoid hitting with his car. Their vehicle gets stuck on a cliff and Ginger must climb out the window, followed by the rest of the family. They make their way to an abandoned house where Charlotte ultimately finds a set of keys to another vehicle which -cue the horror movie cliche- doesn’t start up right away.

Most of Wolf Man is spent watching Blake become a wolf man. His transformation is boring and there’s not enough dialogue between the stars. We needed a larger cast here or more plot points to keep the action moving in-between attacks by the other wolf man running around the woods. As the plot progresses, we get some boring interaction between poor Blake and Charlotte as well as Blake and Ginger.

This film moves at a snail’s pace. The wolf men are effective when they appear towards the ending in terms of the way they look but the movie lacks a decent plot. Ginger and Charlotte spend some time resting on the couch and then, at one point, Ginger tries to tell Blake she loves him but is it too late being that he’s becoming a wolf? His arms are skinless which makes matters uglier than they needed to be as well.

Leigh Whannell probably was aiming for some kind of terrifying family dynamics here but, unfortunately, the film’s lackluster plot gets in the way of the wolf attack sequences which occasionally provide some jump scares but not enough to recommend the movie.

Christopher Abbott is not totally out of sync with his role. His scenes with Ginger, early on, are effective when they’re in the city together but Charlotte and Blake have no chemistry and a great actress like Garner cannot be to blame. The script is the ultimate culprit here. Garner puts in the effort to the best of her ability, but the character is really rather poorly written.

Matilda Firth is the film’s most valuable player as Ginger. Firth gets the emotional substance of her character right on the money, but the screenplay doesn’t do her character any justice whatsoever which is beyond disappointing. Ginger is a cute kid but isn’t developed much beyond that which undermines Firth’s fine work.

Picture the idea of being in the middle of nowhere with your dad (or husband) slowly becoming a werewolf. It’s a premise that had potential, but this movie doesn’t have the proper pacing to keep audiences hooked. Instead, it frequently meanders and annoys, simultaneously.

Wolf Man picks up some momentum towards the end but then just as it starts to get good, the end credits appear, leaving many loose ends that will frustrate viewers immensely. It was good to see some werewolf action but there’s not enough of it in this movie for horror movie fans to walk out of this one feeling like they got their money’s worth.

Rating: 6/10

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