By Leonardo Salazar
Tejano Tribune Film Critic
Australian writer and director Leigh Whannell just released his new horror film about one of the most famous stories of all time: the wolf man. The results are less than stellar from someone who has had success writing in the horror genre with such titles as "Saw" and "Insidious" from fiend James Wan.
I am a big admirer of Whannell because he's a great filmmaker who has demonstrated a lot of times to have an excellent creativity when creating horror stories. I mean, we are talking about the man who wrote the script of "Saw" and made "The Invisible Man" a couple of years ago.
So I went to the theatre very excited to watch the latest iteration of wolf man stories, and honestly, I won't say it was disappointing (because it wasn't) but it wasn't that good either.
When Whannell made "The Invisible Man" in 2020, a lot of horror fans got excited not only because the film was amazing, but also because it was the beginning of a new era of the classic monster movies in the modern era. The film promised a lot, and when it was announced that the new film was going to be about the wolf man, expectations were high. Since the beginning, the movie says that the virus that converts people into a wolf man is called "Hills Fever," which people started to call it "Face of the Wolf."
The movie tells the story of a marriage and their daughter who go out on a cabin in the woods to pass some time together as a family, but since before getting there, they already encounter problems. The thing that I liked the most about this movie is the focus Whannell wanted to give it. This movie doesn't just want to tell a story of a family running away, trying to survive from a monster.
Whannell focuses on showing, in a more realistic way, how the father gets infected by the virus and how little by little he is converting into the wolf man. As I said, this is shown by a more realistic version, so the transition into wolf man is not a heavy body-horror thing like "The Fly" or "The Substance" because here it is more like a real disease where the person, little by little, starts losing hair, teeth, his vision and hearing change, etc.
I really enjoyed how Whannell took this classic legend and used it to do his own version to tell a more realistic story while there is always the tension of what is going to happen to the family and how they all will make it to survive. But still, and despite I hate saying this, the film doesn't get this at its best. I feel that there were details or other factors that the movie could have had that would have made a better film, for example, the history of the virus could have been told and what really is, or they could have show more history about the characters to increase the empathy audiences have towards them and feel more connected to them when they are having problems.
But no, those things didn't happen and it honestly felt like this movie lacked more substance and there were a few times where the film felt a little boring. But still, if you like horror movies and/or if you are a fan of Leigh Whannell like me, I advise you to go and see it.
For all these reasons, I'll give it a 2.8/5 stars.
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