- Directed by Leigh Whannell
- Written by Leigh Whannell, Corbett Tuck
- Stars Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner, Matilda Firth
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAw4PH2IQgo
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This has a pretty minimal setup at the beginning and then gets right to things abruptly. Then, it doesn’t let up. Overall, we both liked it. It was similar enough to other werewolf movies to be comforting and familiar, yet different enough to be interesting.
Spoilery Synopsis
We’re told that in 1995, a hiker went missing in the mountains of Oregon. Several members of the community speculated that the man had contracted an animal-borne virus they called “Hills Fever.” The indigenous people there called it “The Face of the Wolf.”
Grady, a father, and young son, Blake, go out hunting in the mountains. The man warns his son about not eating the mushrooms. When they spot a deer, Blake runs off alone to track it. He sees something scary, but his father is even scarier. They hear something roaring out in the trees and hide in a deer blind. It’s all very tense, but the creature eventually leaves. Blake and his father go home, and Grady calls a friend on the radio. “I saw it. The face of the wolf. It’s real.”
Thirty years later, we see grown-up Blake and his daughter Ginger, in the big city. Wife Charlotte comes in with Blake’s father’s will in the mail: he has inherited Grady’s estate after Grady has finally been officially declared deceased. Blake hadn’t spoken to his scary father in years, and he regrets that now. Blake and Charlotte are having some marital issues, and he wants to work harder to work that out. He suggests the family go to Oregon and spend the summer on the family farm.
On the way getting turned around, they meet Derek, someone he knew when he was really young. Right off the bat, Derek warns them not to be out after dark. Charlotte doesn’t like Derek because he has a gun (he was out hunting). Derek warns them that it takes a special “type” to live out here, with the animals and diseases and stuff. Derek rides along to guide them to Blake’s dad’s farm.
As they talk, they almost hit someone in the road and crash the truck they’re driving. The truck comes to rest stuck in a tree on its side, and it’s also very tense, even more so when a strange animal comes out of the woods, scratches Blake, and drags away Derek’s unconscious body after ripping his belly open. The three run to Grady’s farmhouse as something growls behind them. They barely get inside before it comes pounding on the door.
“It sounded like an animal, but it was standing up on two feet, like a person,” Blake tells Charlotte as he barricades the door. Blake spits out a tooth, thinking he hit his face on the steering wheel in the accident. Charlotte notices that his arm has a big scratch on it, like from an animal. The city-slicker family is not coping well with life in the mountains.
As his family sleeps, Blake notices his hearing has gotten a lot better. A lot. It’s overwhelming. The creature is still pacing around outside the house and reaches through the doggy door to grab Blake’s leg, but Charlotte drives it away. He passes out, and Charlotte tries to use the CB to call for help.
Blake wakes up, and he’s not looking so good. He talks in growls, and his face is a little off. His hair starts falling out and he starts getting worse very quickly. He can’t understand her words, and everything starts looking different to him visually; his senses are going crazy. He starts chewing on his own wounded arm, and Charlotte comes to the conclusion that’s just not right.
Charlotte sees Grady’s old truck parked outside, and she takes everyone outside to try to get it started. She’s smart enough to take a spare battery to jump-start the old truck, and when she does, they get a good look at what is clearly a Wolf Man.
The three run and hide on the roof of the plastic-sheeted greenhouse, and we know where this scene is going to play out right away. Blake runs away as a diversion so that Charlotte and Ginger can run back to the house. When they let Blake into the house a bit later, he’s clearly gotten worse– he’s lost more hair and his teeth have grown longer.
Except then the Wolf Man from outside gets in, and the two wolf men fight. Charlotte stabs the intruder in the back, but that doesn’t stop him. Blake jumps on the monster and bites his throat out, which does the job. Then he sees a tattoo on the monster’s arm– that was Grady, his own father.
Blake stumbles outside and falls down. He continues to change physically, but a lot faster now. Charlotte tells Ginger about Grady’s disappearance a while back, and everyone thought he was dead, but no, he was just sick. Blake returns, and now he menaces his wife and daughter, who hide in the barn.
Charlotte, however, seems to know how to set up a bear trap and uses it to immobilize BlakeWolf. Blake, on the other hand, chews his own foot off to get out of the trap.
Running through the woods, Charlotte and Ginger come across their own wrecked truck and Derek’s ripped-off arm– and his gun. They hide in the same deer blind that Blake and Grady did thirty years ago, and the same scene plays out again. Ginger tells Charlotte that “he wants this to be over.” Charlotte does, in fact, shoot Blake.
The family gets together to watch him die as the sun comes up. Charlotte and Ginger walk out of the woods and admire the mountain view.
Brian’s Commentary
A lot of Blake’s dialogue seems overwritten– who talks to their child like that? Someone who’s never seen a kid? There are a few callbacks to the 1941 film, but not as many as you might expect. I didn’t really spot anything to connect to the 2010 version, but they may have been trying to forget that happened.
There’s no gypsy moon curses here, just a weird animal disease. Most of the film is watching the disease progress, not knowing what the final product is going to be. I was reminded of 1986’s “The Fly” in that regard. The transformation scene, which is usually the best part of many werewolf films, actually takes up the better part of an hour here, as it’s so slow.
Charlotte comes off as a pampered, big-city girl who doesn’t know anything about rural life, but she can jump-start a truck and set a bear trap in the dark.
The “wolf vision” is pretty cool and I haven’t seen it done like this before. The Wolf Man makeup, while probably more realistic in nature, is not impressive at all– it’s basically a dirty-looking man with big teeth.
Leaving out the wolfman’s appearance, overall, I liked it.
Kevin’s Commentary
The slow motion transformation was very interesting, a permanent diseased state instead of changing under the full moon and changing back during the day. The point of view of Blake as he changed, with heightened senses and loss of language skills was cool too. The blend of familiar elements and fresh things was interesting. It wasn’t a perfect movie, but it entertained me.
