This weekend marks the debut of director/writer Leigh Whannell’s second entry in rebooting Universal’s famed monsters, “Wolf Man.” Based on the 1941 feature starring Claude Rains and Lon Chaney, Jr., Whannell’s new take on the character is a story of generational trauma and abuse involving a man named Blake (Christopher Abbott) who takes his wife and daughter to visit his family home in Oregon. The trio are soon set upon by a mysterious creature and when Blake is bit he starts to transform into someone (or something) that isn’t him.
“Wolf Man” holds commonalities with Whannell’s first dive into Universal’s monster waters, the 2020 remake of “The Invisible Man.” Both films explore romantic relationships between a couple and how abuse manifests itself in different ways to create trauma that doesn’t disappear once the relationship ends. In “Wolf Man,” the viewer meets Blake’s wife Charlotte (Julia Garner), a journalist more content to spend time on the phone with her editor than bonding with her husband and daughter. It’s clear her marriage to Blake is crumbling, and though he sees the trip as a way for them all to be together, Charlotte is more concerned that she has no ability to bond with her child at all.
The eventual arrival of the titular “wolf man,” manifesting in Blake himself, forces Charlotte into the role of protector, a position she’s been content to let her husband take over. As he reminds his daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth), his job is to protect her and he couldn’t live with himself if anything he did “scarred her,” much like his own relationship to his father did with him. Whannell’s focus on trauma is different here, prioritizing Blake’s relationship with his father, and how generational trauma manifests, than it was in “Invisible Man.” “Invisible Man” focused on heroine Cecilia’s (Elisabeth Moss) escape from her physically and psychologically abusive boyfriend to show how quickly people can disbelieve women, too content to sum them up as crazy.
Yet Charlotte and Cecilia have much in common. Both are written as incredibly smart and driven individuals whose bright lights have been dampened (or at least rerouted) through their respective relationships. For Cecilia, her intelligence is denigrated through the control and gaslighting of her partner, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). And when she attempts to assert control of her own life, such as getting a job, the gaslighting continues to manifest, albeit without anyone seeing it due to her belief that Adrian has found a way to be invisible.
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Charlotte in “Wolf Man” is trying to balance her own personal desires with that of obligation to her family. Her dreams aren’t squandered, but she’s placed in a position where she has to choose between work and family in an odd return to the idea that women cannot have it all. The viewer sees her come home where Blake is preparing dinner. She’s arguing with her editor and refuses to take the call in another room despite Blake politely asking her to. When she ends the call she gets angry that Blake decided to interrupt her. When Blake starts to lose his grip on reality and starts transforming into a wolf, Charlotte’s assertiveness in work pivots to being assertive as a mother, protecting her child.
Yet because the viewer sees Charlotte and Blake’s relationship play out – unlike “Invisible Man” where we see no flashbacks to Adrian and Cecilia’s – the concept of abuse and trauma focuses on how women react upon the discovery that they are actually in an abusive, traumatic situation. It’s clear that Blake and Charlotte go on the trip to Oregon as a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, one that seems to only exist for the sake of their daughter. As Blake proceeds to get progressively sicker, less coherent, and more violent, Charlotte goes through various stages as she grapples with the trauma of her situation. She spends part of the movie in denial, content to emphasize to Ginger that Blake is just “sick” and that once they find a doctor they’ll fix him. She even tells Blake that his actions are the result of a sickness, making lycanthropy stand in for mental illness, and upon returning home things will go back to the way they were.
Once Blake fully transforms, and his actions — whether sick or not — are violent and could result in Charlotte and Ginger’s deaths, the former turns to action. She is determined to save her daughter at all costs, including throwing Blake out of the house and physically harming him. There are moments, though, where the character’s actions might be perceived as dumb, such as when she leaves Blake outside only for Ginger to cry, “You left him outside!” Though it goes against every instinct in Charlotte, she brings her husband back into the house, both to placate their child (who is closely bonded to her dad) and as a means of continuing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this time his saner instincts will kick in and he won’t harm them. This, of course, ends up being untrue.
Many of the flawed elements of Charlotte’s character can be chalked up to Whannell’s continued desire to explore relationship dynamics and abusive situations. We get little of Charlotte’s backstory short of her job, and the trio doesn’t appear to interact with anyone outside of their house, mimicking the isolation that accompanies domestic violence situations. There’s also more of an emphasis on situating Blake’s past trauma to contextualize his current situation, whereas Charlotte is a character firmly living in the now, as if she is taking every minute of her life day by day.
The themes within “Wolf Man” are far blunter than “Invisible Man,” but it will be interesting to see if Whannell continues to use Universal’s monsters to tell another story of feminine trauma and resilience to create a trilogy of terror.
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