On the surface, Wolf Man may not seem like the kind of movie born from intense grief. Written and directed by Australian Leigh Whannell, famous for co-creating the Saw franchise and the haunting Elisabeth Moss vehicle The Invisible Man, it might seem like Just Another Horror Flick.
A reboot of the classic 1941 film,Wolf Man sticks to the original premise. We meet a young family: doting dad Blake (Golden Globe nominee Christopher Abbott), his wife Charlotte (Emmy winner Julia Garner) and their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). After Blake’s father dies, they travel to his childhood home in rural Oregon to pack up his belongings.
As the family approaches the farmhouse in the dead of night they’re attacked by an unseen animal, with Blake suffering a wound so nasty that no amount of Dettol could be enough. Before long, the family is being stalked by the creature, while inside the house Blake begins a haunting transformation of his own.
Australian director Leigh Whannell first made waves as the star and co-creator of horror franchise Saw.Credit: James Brickwood
Wolf Man could have become a paint-by-numbers genre film about a Big Bad Wolf in the hands of a less capable director. But Whannell recognised the true horror stemmed from Blake’s transformation, a decision driven by his own experience of degenerative disease.
“While my wife and I were writing, we had a very close friend in Los Angeles suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [ALS, also known as motor neurone disease, or MND], and that’s a disease that truly takes over your body,” Whannell explains. “It’s heartbreaking when your body turns against you and begins shutting down; it’s a real-life horror movie for both the person suffering and the people left behind.”
Following his friend’s death, Whannell channelled his grief into Wolf Man as a way of processing what had happened. “It was important to us to reflect on some idea of this waking nightmare and to try and capture the fear Blake experiences as he feels himself slipping away,” Whannell says. “That’s the scariest part; people that have these types of diseases fight to try and maintain some semblance of themselves.”
Family trouble: Julia Garner, Christopher Abbott and Matilda Firth in Wolf Man.Credit: Universal Studios
After helming the successful Invisible Man in 2020, Whannell has his second crack at breathing new life into movie monsters with Wolf Man. Since they first lurked on the silver screen in the early 20th century, this motley crew of Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man and the creature from the Black Lagoon has been ripe for reimagining.
Should Wolf Man be successful, it will continue the trend of major studios hedging their bets on existing intellectual property. Last year, every one of the top-10 box office hits was either a sequel, a remake, existing intellectual property or a prequel, with films such as Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, Deadpool & Wolverine and Dune: Part Two populating the list.
Whannell launched his career off the back of 2004’s Saw, an original and low-budget concept – so does he worry Hollywood has become too risk-averse? “I do worry because I grew up in an era when original movies were coming out every weekend, stuff like Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Back to the Future, and we’re still feeding off the corpse of these movies,” he says.
“You have to be the change you want to see. Obviously, Wolf Man is an existing idea, but I’m not about to make a movie based on a video game. It’s challenging, but original movies are breaking through; films like The Substance and Longlegs give me hope – both did well at the box office.”
Leigh Whannell in Saw (2004). Against a budget of barely $US1 million it became a billion-dollar franchise.Credit: Screenshot
Having carved out a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most reliable horror directors, Whannell admits he is keen to broaden his horizons. “There’s that famous quote from [American film director] John Ford, ‘I only make westerns’, and some directors have made a great career doing just one thing,” Whannell says. “But, lately, I feel the need to flex a different muscle; I don’t want to get stale creatively.”
Whannell’s fellow RMIT graduate and co-creator of Saw, James Wan, has slowly branched out from horror to large-scale action movies, taking the reins on a Fast & Furious film and the big-budget Aquaman franchise. Might we see Whannell move into the same space?
“Maybe a rom-com or something character-driven. I’m lucky now that I have more freedom in what comes across my desk.”
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