The Poppies of Terra #48 - Old Wolves, New Tricks

I enjoyed Leigh Whannel’s Upgrade (2018) and had a blast with his re-imagining of The Invisible Man (2020), so unsurprisingly I was excited about the prospect of him taking on the classic werewolf trope and making it howl to a new tune. Alas, Wolf Man turns out to be more of a sheep in werewolf’s clothing–with most of the thrills trimmed off.

I experienced Wolf Man in IMAX, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. The prestige format helped to showcase Whannel’s meticulous direction, immersive cinematography by Stefan Duscio, and a score brimming with wonder and terror by the ever-dependable Benjamin Wallfisch. Unfortunately, the huge screen and upscale technical presentation also highlighted how these elements service a story that literally goes nowhere. 

The film opens with great promise. A young boy named Blake and his father are hiking out in the remote Oregon wilderness and encounter something menacing. The staging and tension in this preamble are very effective, evoking in my mind, though not quite rivalling, my favorite extended prologue in a horror film, namely that of David Prior’s The Empty Man (2020). Both of these introductions can almost function as standalone shorts. After this we skip ahead thirty years, where the now adult Blake (Christopher Abbott) is married to Charlotte (Julia Garner) and has a daughter named Ginger (Matilda Firth), a likely not-so-subtle reference to Ginger Snaps (2000). They’re living in the big city, their marriage fraught, when Blake receives news that his father, long missing, has been declared dead. The cabin and his other belongings are now Blake’s. Though Blake is a writer and Charlotte is a journalist, neither has presumably ever seen a horror film, so they decide to head out to the desolate area as a family. As you may imagine, it doesn’t take long for things to go wrong. In the course of a road accident, Blake is bitten by something, and soon begins exhibiting symptoms of a ravaging disease. During the course of one very, very long night, he is consumed, turning against his wife and daughter even while some vestigial human elements advocate for their protection.

I think Whannel’s approach with The Invisible Man was successful because it consisted of inversions and elaborations combined in a way that produced contemporary commentary on issues of note. Here, his reinvention consists mostly of subtractions. Gone is the toggling back and forth between human and animal, and with it the fascinating notion of a consciousness stretched to the breaking point as it straddles two worlds. Gone is the power of the moon. Gone is the thorough physical recomposition itself; wolfie Blake looks more like a sick zombie than anything else, with an overall aesthetic too heavily reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s superb The Fly (1986), an acknowledged influence. Wait a minute, you might object: Whannel does give us the creature’s subjective perspective. True, but the lightshow is short-lived, and without any thematic substance to keep it afloat proves little more than a silver flash in the narrative pan, rather than a way of delivering fresh insights. Further, it’s partly undermined by questions of logic; in several scenes Blake’s amplified senses fail to hear obvious sounds like the thudding hearts of his sleeping wife and daughter, or even to sense what would be the overpowering scent (minor spoiler) of a threatening entity a few feet away. And then there is the question of the self-cannibalized arm, best forgotten by us as it apparently is by the story. 

During a chase sequence we see Charlotte and Ginger atop the white roof of a greenhouse. The camera pans in from beneath the white flexible material, where their silhouetted shapes make indentations as they frantically scurry to avoid imminent attack. This scene is for me emblematic of Wolf Man’s problems; it’s stylish and well-executed, but we’re at a remove from an experience that should be viscerally engaging and horrifically frightening. Instead, these affects are filtered through conceptual decisions and design notions, becoming diluted in the process. Leaving aside well-known werewolf movies that are part of most fans’ canons, Wolf Man still stumbles. For all its troubled production and hybrid form as a finished product, Wes Craven’s Cursed (2005) remains a more interesting take on this type of material. So does, as a matter of fact, Mike Nichols’ Wolf (1994), in which we engagingly follow the werewolf odyssey of editor Will Randall (Jack Nicholson). Wallfisch’s musical outing here is quite fine, but his chords could easily carry over to a number of other stories conjuring up chilly awe and dissonant descents into frenzied survivalism. It lacks the specificity of longing and torment, for example, of Ennio Morricone’s little-known score for La Lupa [The She-Wolf] (1996), or a number of other outings. Wolf Man plays like a competent X-Files monster-of-the-week episode stretched out to feature length. Its higher budget and refined craft turn out to be, ironically, the production’s white fangs. 

Presence, meanwhile, by the uber-prolific Steven Soderbergh–his thirty-fourth feature, gasp–goes smaller and twists harder. Be forewarned that, despite its marketing, it’s not a horror picture, but rather a family drama with tragic and supernatural elements. Part of the film’s innovation resides in us inhabiting, as it were, the point-of-view of a non-corporeal entity roaming around inside a house. We witness excerpts of family conversations without their full context, never adhering to the human characters, but getting just enough information to infer the broad strokes. 

I say “part of” because I think the movie’s greater novelty derives from the ending of David Koepp’s screenplay, which introduces a fascinating science fiction beat to what’s come before. I don’t want to reveal the surprise, but I will say this: after the concluding revelation, think back to everything you’ve seen and try to reinterpret it in light of this information. I think you’ll find a number of scenes become imbued with, or even, if you will, haunted by new meaning. That said, some viewers will find the acting by the principals a bit stagey, and the ghostly camera-work more of a gimmick than an experience. I have some questions about the varying power levels of the entity’s interaction with material objects. Still, one has to applaud Soderbergh and his team of dedicated troopers for being creative and producing a piece of work that at times is quite touching.

Both of these films are essentially single-setting ventures, centered on the chamber-piece dynamics of small familial units, summoning up a variety of techniques to present distinctive outlooks on familiar vistas. Wolf Man turns out to be somewhat undone by the simplicity of its intended regression, but does literally contain one glorious panoramic shot, while the overall more flimsy Presence gains solidity from its commitment to a unique juxtaposition of flipped perspective and a snaky reveal. It’s encouraging to see this appetite for experimentation in storytellers both relatively recent and tenured. In attempting to innovate we’re at least being thrown a bone. All the tricks may not work, but every dog has its day.