Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell has said he wanted to put a new spin on the tired and tested werewolf horror movie with his latest film Wolf Man.
The creature feature, which is in Irish cinemas now, tells the story of Blake (Christopher Abbott), husband, father and struggling writer living in San Francisco, who inherits his remote childhood home in rural Oregon.
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He sees it as a chance to start afresh with his wife, journalist Charlotte (Garner), and their young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). However, their new domestic rural idyl is shattered when a terrifying figure from Blake’s childhood comes crashing back into his life.
It’s a schlocky body shock horror from Blumhouse, the home of the jump scare, and Australian film maker Whannell went back to a pre-CGI era of movies like 1941’s The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney, for inspiration.
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment via Zoom, he said, “I guess when you’re dealing with an iconic character like this, for me, the first question you’re going to ask yourself is what am I going to do that’s different?
“There’s a lot of portraits in this gallery, a lot of people have taken a stab at this character and put forth their take.
“This is my version of the character and it’s really intriguing to me to tell this story this way and I can’t wait for people to see it.”
The movie is essentially a three-hander between Ozark star Garner, who has also starred in TV dramas Girls and The Americans, Abbott (Poor Things) and Firth (Hullraisers and Coma), who was only ten when she acted in Wolf Man.
It’s a movie that is likely to pull on your heartstrings as well as put the frighteners on you as it is really a story about the relationship between Blake and Matilda, who is played by 11-year-old English actress Firth.
“I have an 11-year-old daughter and you’re always struggling as a parent with the big questions,” Whannell says. “Am I parenting correctly? Am I messing this person up? Am I doing better than my parents did? Or worse than they did?
“So, all that was on my mind when I was writing the film with my wife – we were putting a lot in there about relationships and how to keep a marriage together with all the stress with kids. I’m glad to hear you say it was an emotional film for you because that to me seemed like the clearest path.
“Yes, you want to scare people and give them what they’re paying for when they want to see a horror movie but I really want them to come out of the theatre thinking about their own life and feeling emotional. That’s what I set out to do.”
In some ways, Wolf Man recalls Whannell’s terrific little pulp sci-fi Upgrade, which is about a paralysed man who gains control of his body after an AI computer chip is implanted in his brain.
Like Blake, he can only look on in horror as his body goes through a drastic and terrifying transformation.
“I hadn’t thought about the comparisons with Upgrade but there is a bit of a Frankenstein aspect to that movie in that this person is changing and there is body horror so there is that link,” Whannell says.
“They say as a writer that even if you don’t want to, you keep returning to the same themes.
“We all have certain obsessions and you’ll see them popping up again and again in people’s work and you either lean into them or you don’t. I guess without even knowing it, I have this obsession with the body and our bodies are so fragile and they can betray us.
“One of my great fears is degenerative illness because it’s so random, natural selection just picks you out. There is no rhyme or reason and there’s a cruelty to it. I wanted the film to be about that cruelty of nature.
“We’re animals too and the brutality of the natural world can visit upon you.”
Wolf Man is in cinemas now
