Following the critical and box office success of 2020’s The Invisible Man, writer-director Leigh Whannell has returned with another modernized take on a classic Universal Monster, Wolf Man. The Australian filmmaker, famously known for co-creating the Saw and Insidious franchises with James Wan, found himself in a unique position when Jason Blum of Blumhouse offered him another go at the Universal Monsters IP. Universal Pictures was ready to further distance themselves from their well-documented, failed “Dark Universe” franchise, but a director had not made more than one successful Universal Monster movie since Stephen Sommers‘ two Brendan Fraser-starring Mummy blockbusters in the early 2000s. The pressure placed on Whannell’s shoulders could not have been higher.
Despite initially declining the offer to direct Wolf Man, Leigh Whannell eventually found a way to navigate these high expectations. While he once again committed to telling a modernized story, similar to The Invisible Man, his interpretation of the titular creature itself was completely unprecedented. Wolf Man follows Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) and his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner), who take their loving young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) away from the busy metropolitan streets of San Francisco to the dense, beautiful Oregon forests. With Blake’s estranged father recently declared deceased, going up to his old family farm to collect his dad’s belongings seems like the perfect excuse to escape from Charlotte’s workaholic lifestyle and possibly heal their troubled marriage.
However, as the family of three travels deeper into the woods, they discover something sinister is hunting them. This is how Leigh Whannell introduces his version of the werewolf, which borrows a bit from traditional lore but is ultimately a brand-new interpretation. Moreover, like Whannell’s past works, from Saw to the sci-fi thriller Upgrade, there’s an unforeseen depth to the horrors of Wolf Man.
Enter Makeup Guru Arjen Tuiten
In our previous exclusive Wolf Man interview with Leigh Whannell, the filmmaker revealed that he wrote the script with his wife, Corbett Tuck, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is how the story shaped itself around the theme of isolation with a small family trapped in a lonely farmhouse in the middle of the forest without help. In the movie, Blake falls ill with an inexplicable sickness — i.e., the werewolf infection after coming into contact with the beast — and his loved ones are forced to watch helplessly as his body decays. The pandemic allegories could not be clearer in the screenplay, but this required a new design for the titular Wolf Man, something more feral and sickly looking.
Enter Dutch-born prosthetic makeup artist Arjen Tuiten. In keeping with the Universal Monsters film tradition of prioritizing practical effects, going all the way back to 1941’s The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Jr., Tuiten came on board to bring Whannell’s bold vision for the iconic creature to life. In addition to boasting credits on Pan’s Labyrinth, Maleficent, and many other beloved films, Tuiten previously won the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for his work on 2017’s Wonder. If that wasn’t already impressive, Tuiten got his start in the industry working under VFX and special effects makeup legends Stan Winston and Rick Baker.
A Diseased Animal
In getting the chance to sit down with Wolf Man director Leigh Whannell for a second exclusive interview, he tells us that his main goal for this new werewolf design was for it “to feel like a disease rather than something where he’s suddenly covered in fur.” As it turns out, it didn’t take long for Arjen Tuiten to nail this look.
Leigh Whannell: “When I met Arjen Tuiten, the makeup artist who was the main designer on this film, he and I got in sync about making the design more of a disease. He told me, ‘Let me just build a model out of clay to show you,’ and I honestly didn’t know what he would come up with. After he finished the model, he covered it in a sheet to finally show me. When he ripped the sheet away, that first Wolf Man design I saw was actually what we went with. We didn’t have a lot of versions going back and forth with different notes. That first model he built is truly what we went with.”
A Devastating Link Between Husband and Wife
Courtesy of Nicola Dove/Universal
DiscussingFilm also sat down with Wolf Man lead stars Christopher Abbott (Possessor, Poor Things) and Julia Garner (Ozark, Inventing Anna). When asked about Leigh Whannell’s new Wolf Man design, the two actors revealed that this distinct look added a lot to their performances, especially since they share most of their screen time together. While this diseased Wolf Man design, as revealed in the film’s marketing, garnered online criticism for not resembling the original Universal Monster enough, it does work in service of the narrative at hand. For Garner, the Wolf Man’s sick resemblance to Abbott’s human face, specifically his recognizable eyes even in his final form, stood out to her the most.
Julia Garner: “I think something is scarier when there’s a familiarity to it. You’re more desperate to connect with the monster because you can still recognize certain elements of their humanity. It might have [Christopher Abbott’s] same eyes, but he’s not there anymore. I don’t want to say that it made it easier for me to act with Christopher [while he was in full makeup and prosthetics], but it did make it more real for us.”
From The Fly to The Elephant Man
Actor Christopher Abbott has cited David Cronenberg’s The Fly as a huge inspiration for his take on the Wolf Man. Unlike past werewolf iterations, where they transform instantly, Leigh Whannell’s version of the monster goes through a slow transformation process, homing in on the point of it being an illness. Blake’s mind and body slowly deteriorate and become more animalistic as the plot progresses. As Abbott explains to us, this major difference from other werewolves made the project worthwhile for him.
When referencing The Fly, Christopher Abbott says, “There are so many subtleties and nuances that you can play within that range — you get to see the middle stages of change.” It’s in these middle stages that Leigh Whannell gets to have the most fun with some gnarly body horror. However, in order to make these harrowing scenes a reality, Abbott had to sit in the makeup chair for up to 7 hours at a time, which he admitted to us was often tedious and led to him becoming “stir-crazy.”
Yet, when it was time for the cameras to roll, it wasn’t hard for the actor to get into the wild Wolf Man persona as Arjen Tuiten’s prosthetics “took care of it,” he states. Aside from The Fly, though, Christopher Abbott did mention another film inspiration that informed his Wolf Man performance: David Lynch’s The Elephant Man. According to the actor, even if some moviegoers might be initially shocked by this new Wolf Man look, it’s the visual tragedy of the design that really sells Leigh Whannell’s one-of-a-kind vision.
Christopher Abbott: “When Leigh showed me the design that Arjen did for the character, I just thought there was something so tragic about the look of it. It reminded me of The Elephant Man, where there’s something heartfelt present. It’s scary and frightening, but there’s a real tragedy there. So, that was the most exciting thing for me because there is so much to play with there as an actor.”
Wolf Man is now playing in theaters!
Release Date: January 17, 2025.
Directed by Leigh Whannell.
Written by Leigh Whannell & Corbett Tuck.
Based on The Wolf Man by Curt Siodmak.
Produced by Jason Blum & Ryan Gosling.
Executive Producers: Leigh Whannell, Beatriz Sequeira, Mel Turner, & Ken Kao.
Main Cast: Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth, Sam Jaeger, Benedict Hardie, Ben Prendergast, Zac Chandler, Beatriz Romilly, & Milo Cawthorne.
Cinematographer: Stefan Duscio.
Composer: Benjamin Wallfisch.
Production Companies: Blumhouse & Waypoint Entertainment.
Distributor: Universal Pictures.
Runtime: 103 minutes.
Rated R.
