Leigh Whannell makes prestige horror films without having to rub your nose in it. You know what I’m talking about. Some purveyors of prestige horror, much as we may love them, can get up inside their own arseholes a bit. We don’t have to be reminded that we are in a prestige horror every moment of the movie. Just the moments that count.

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Whannell’s Wolf Man opens on the striking image of a bee viciously attacking ants on a tree limb. There’s the prestige. They grapple in anguish for maybe 20 seconds, in a chorus of something that sounds like screaming. But then from there, just as he did in The Invisible Man, Whannell sprinkles the movie with just a twinkle of prestige, at just the times that it perfectly kicks up our investment another notch. If the studio’s release of this in January is to be believed, there’s no reason we should be invested in any of this. But due to the uncommon character work of a trio of talented actors, we so are.

That trio is a family: dad Blake (Christopher Abbott), mum Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). They’re city folk – she’s a journalist, he’s an out of work writer – but he comes from deep in the wilderness of Oregon, where he was raised by an overprotective dad (Sam Jaeger) who was always concerned about keeping young Blake safe, and had the temper to prove it. But he had good reason: these woods might be the stomping grounds of a lost hiker who has come to be known locally as “Face of the Wolf.” This thing, if it exists, is more canine than man, covered with hair and gifted with top speeds and sharp claws. Blake and his dad may have encountered this creature when he was a boy. When he was old enough, Blake left and remained estranged from his father.

Blake is no longer a boy. Thirty years later, his father, who also went missing, has just been legally declared dead by the state of Oregon, which means Blake and family can finally clear out his personal effects from the abandoned farmhouse. Blake and Charlotte have been going through a rough patch anyway, and Blake wants to put closure on that chapter of his life with a summer he hopes will rejuvenate them. Of course it doesn’t go that way. On their approach in the rental truck, they swerve off the road to avoid this … creature … and narrowly escape a scrape with him. Actually, Blake does get a scrape from an incredibly sharp claw, and that’s enough to begin transforming him almost immediately.

Wolf Man is a film about transformation, none more than the way a loving parent can transform into a frightened animal, who then lashes out verbally, when fearing they might lose the thing they love most. The men in this movie want to protect their families, and want the cost of that not to be becoming angry with those families when they expose themselves to danger. It’s a fine line between acting monstrously and becoming a monster, an idea that the film tends to literalise.

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I’m laying the themes out bluntly. Whannell does not. It’s impossible to mistake what he’s doing, but he does it with such economy that it washes over you as natural rather than forced. That’s because even in a 103-minute movie, Whannell takes the time to be naturalistic. There are moments that seem like they might have lifted out for time, that make the movie. The conversation between Blake and Charlotte, when he expresses his doubts about their relationship, is notable for its care to getting the words right, to showing us that these are two people who love each other but have exchanged that for sniping at each other more often than they’d like. Instead of reacting defensively, they sink into the reality of it, and use the stronger love underneath to take the journey that will change their lives, but not in the way they expect.

Abbott and Garner kill it here. Like his director, Abbott doesn’t need to rub our noses in the fact that he’s a good-looking man, making him more like a mildly heightened version of an everyman, whose depth of feeling is evident in every emotional gesture on the talented actor’s face. Garner’s face is equally subtle in its expressions, equally empathetic.

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It’s something Whannell does throughout his films: give us something different than we were expecting. He does that with his camera in a way that will be reminiscent of The Invisible Man, moving it to a part of the room where there’s nothing there – and then doesn’t put something there. Sometimes a corner of a room is just a corner of a room. But by setting up these little traps that don’t go off, he surprises us all the more when they do, though they rarely go off in the way you expect. There are jump scares here, but they do not do that term dirty.

And then there are the technical accomplishments. We know there is going to be plenty of prosthetics and other wolf effects, and it’s very possible not to do that well. Wolf Man does it well. Then there are the other things Whannell does with his camera – actually the camera of DP Stefan Duscio – that verge on virtuoso. One sequence where characters climb out of the crashed truck, precariously pinned between two trees, sees the camera swooping from on top to down below in one steady movement.

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Then there are the choices Whannell makes in depicting Blake’s transformation. Spoiler alert: there isn’t really an American Werewolf in London-style rapid mutation. (Though there’s plenty of squidgy body horror.) Instead, the sharpening of Blake’s senses, particularly his hearing and vision, are presented in ways I won’t even tell you about here because it would ruin the fun.

What makes Wolf Man all the more gratifying, especially for fans of the Australian director, is that it is clearly starting to establish an oeuvre for this man, with films whose connective tissue is strong. There’s not only the moments that recall The Invisible Man, there’s even a callback to Saw, which Whannell co-wrote and starred in. The moment isn’t cheeky enough to call attention to itself, but will be evident to those primed to make the connection. There isn’t anything cheeky about Wolf Man. It’s just exceptional prestige horror, and all the better for emerging organically from the fine materials.

 

Wolf Man is currently playing in cinemas.

9 / 10