Wolf Man

Well give him his due, Leigh Whannell made sure his name appears on screen often enough, but sadly what's he striven to churn out here is nothing remotely innovative. It's all about "Blake" (Christopher Abbott) who's been estranged from his rather militaristic dad for as long as he's been an adult. He lives, albeit increasingly distantly, with his wife "Charlotte" (Julia Garner) and daughter "Ginger" (Matilda Firth) in the big city but when his father is declared legally dead, decides it's a great opportunity to visit the wilderness of Oregon to sort through his belongings. Off they set through the forest driving a removals van, in the dark, with no real idea where they are going. By pure fluke, they encounter "Derek" (Benedict Hardie) who remembers "Blake" as a child and offers to guide them. Next thing there's an apparition, then loads of broken branches before a scene reminiscent of "Jurassic Park" (1993) with their van precariously perched half way up (or down) a tree. There's something menacing out there and they have to make it to the safety of the house. Easier said than done, though, as en route poor old "Blake" gets himself scratched. Once in the house, they hope to sit it out - but is their enemy inside this iron-bar clad house, or...? At times it is quite tensely directed using the forest, the darkness and cracking-branch audio to decent effect, but the dialogue is inane and it suffers from a common flaw amongst horror films of late. The characters make the most ridiculous of decisions. Nobody in their right mind would go a-wandering through the woods at night at the best of times. I know they are both supposed to be writers, so unlikely to be overly tapped into popular culture, but surely one of them would have watched an horror movie in their lives and realised the stupidity of that and virtually all of their other courses of action. On that front, it's "Charlotte" who gets the gong for being the daftest of the daft. The make-up, prosthetics and visual effects folks deserve some plaudits here on their well crafted work as the film advances, but as for the remainder. Well it's a just another log cabin in the woods style of short story that struggles to sustain itself into a feature length movie we haven't seen dozens of times before.