Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner in Horror Redo

If you find Joe Johnston’s 2010 dud for Benicio del Toro, Wolfmansteeped in gothic melodrama, raucous folklore, CGI excess, and the relatively simple narrative of Universal’s recent return to the Monster Movie Hall of Fame, The wolf manit may be more to your taste. This isn’t a reimagining on the level of Leigh Whannell’s previous foray into classic horror vaults; The invisible man. But there’s no shortage of poignancy or gore, not to mention brisk efficiency in the way the script isolates a fragile family unit before plunging it into authoritarian chaos.

Confining all but a few scenes to one setting of an old farm and barn located in the backwoods of Oregon gives The wolf man Feeling afraid of the Corona virus remnants movie. It is both a force and a restriction. But Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner do a good job of ramping up the fear factor as their characters’ strained marriage is tested by an escalating bout of bloodlust and flesh-gnawing.

Written by Whannell with his wife, actress Corbett Tuck, this contemporary retelling does away with most of the usual staples associated with the lupine myth since Lon Chaney Jr.’s original 1941 screen version penned by Curt Siodmak—no full moon, no silver bullet, no hex and no blooming coyote. The closest thing to a mythical dimension is some opening text revealing that a hiker has disappeared in central Oregon and is believed to have been infected with an animal virus known to the local indigenous people as “wolf face.”

Whannell and Tuck sharpen the focus on familial tensions by removing most external narrative events, focusing on the fragile and seemingly mismatched relationship between the couple as husband Blake (Abbott) undergoes troubling changes and wife Charlotte (Garner) is forced to make split-second decisions. To protect herself and their young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). Setting the main action over the course of a horrific, foggy night was a smart choice.

The actors keep us engaged with their fate for the duration, even if the script is psychologically weak. There is nothing like the unnerving foundation of the domestic violence that occurred The invisible man A chilling remake. Still, it’s engaging enough – a mid-level Blumhouse entrance rather than a top-level one, aided by Whannell DP Stefan Duscio’s regular rotating camera and disorienting angles, by a shaky soundscape of racial menace and Benjamin Wallfisch’s gut-wrenching orchestral score, which is kind of His own monstrous beast. It also helps that the focus is on practical effects, not CG.

Blake’s inner demons are seeded in a prologue where we meet him as a teenage boy (Zach Chandler). He’s been dragged out of bed to go hunting with his tough military father, Grady (Sam Jaeger), whose rant about trying to keep his son safe is almost as frightening as the roaring beast that seems to be stalking them. They scramble up a tree in a ragtag, blind deer for cover, but the as-yet-unseen creature approaches terrifyingly, leaving behind a massive claw mark etched into the temple door.

Thirty years later, Blake is a writer “between two jobs”, married to Charlotte and living in San Francisco, where she has become increasingly focused on her career as a journalist. This means that Blake spends much more time with precocious Ginger than with her mother, making Charlotte feel like an outsider.

When Blake receives legal confirmation from Oregon officials that the long-lost father he grew up to fear is dead, he suggests that Charlotte and Ginger travel there with him while he prepares the family farm. Charlotte is hesitant, but Blake believes that the scenic view from the valley near where he grew up will help heal their strained relationship.

While driving in the dark after getting lost, Blake is startled by the sudden appearance of a figure standing upright in the headlight beams, causing him to veer off the road and crash into the moving rental truck. Terrified by the sounds of a feral predator and the evidence of the carnage it could wreak, the three run into the house, barely making it through the door as the creature approaches them. Whannell again limits our view of him by a fast-moving blur in the background.

Charlotte and Ginger are understandably terrified, but their fear turns to anxiety when they discover a deep gash on Blake’s arm. He soon began to show signs of a kind of feverish illness, evident in his eyes, skin, and teeth, but also in his heightened senses. In one dramatic scene, what appears to him like the feet of a large animal hurtling across the surface is much more difficult than he could have imagined.

With no phone service to connect to the outside world, the family is stuck there, taking cover from the predator outside while Blake’s evil physical transformation progresses right in front of them. Gradually, he loses the ability to speak, and is no longer able to communicate or understand his wife and daughter. When he starts biting off big chunks of his injured arm, they get really scared.

Abbott, who plays a damaged man, excels at raw intensity but also at the softer side of someone emotionally scarred by a terrible childhood. He throws himself through painful physical and mental anguish into a half-man, half-monster spiral as Blake – constantly adding new layers of prosthetics – struggles to reconcile the desire for bloodlust with the lingering feelings in his troubled mind for his family.

The only cheesy element is what the filmmakers call a “wolf vision,” allowing us to see Charlotte and Ginger through Blake’s eyes as unfamiliar figures outlined in a luminous mist. The effect feels cheap, making you wonder if the burgeoning werewolf got his retinas burned out by too much blurry video footage.

Even with some missteps and disappointing dialogue, the tension remains mostly high, especially when Blake’s protective instincts resurface long enough to help them fend off the original threat – which includes a surprising discovery that many will be anticipating. Only when that conflict approaches does Whannell give us a good look at the creature in one of many terrifying jump-shots.

Garner’s character initially seems assured, but becomes more compelling once the quick-thinking and resourceful Charlotte is forced into the fight, and there are poignant suggestions of her rediscovering her love for her husband just as he slips beyond her reach. Firth does a good job as a child in danger, and she is touching as Ginger struggles with her conviction that the father she adores is still out there somewhere.

Whannell has cited pre-CG horror of the 1980s as influences, specifically David Cronenberg The fly And John Carpenter The thingIt is recognizable in the shape-shifting scenes where Blake’s bones break and twist and his skeletal structure changes.

Anyone who looks back long enough to remember the eye-opening thrills at the time of profound transformations in Joe Dante’s film Howling Or John Landis An American werewolf in London – Rob Bottin and Rick Baker were really the pioneers of groundbreaking effects back in 1981 – and the latest iteration might be judged low on fresh juice. (It can’t be just me who finds creepy nuclear families a bit cute.)

But still, there’s something inherently satisfying about classic monster tales, and Whannell has enough of an ability to handle primal fears to hold it together. The wolf man Entertaining. Plus, if you doubt that an animal could really chew off its own limbs to escape a trap, wonder no more.