Leigh Whannell Unpacks Wolf Man’s Horrific Influences

After Invisible Man and Abigail, Common’s received one other fashionable tackle considered one of its traditional monsters hitting theaters. Whereas it’s taken a while to craft Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, it’s getting right here in a couple of month, and a brand new behind the scenes video digs into the movie’s many inspirations.

Within the featurette, Whannell readily admits to utilizing the movie to discover “an infection and transformation,” themes which were on the coronary heart of werewolf tales. However his spin has some additional weight: he wrote the script in 2020 through the early pandemic days, so the movie can’t assist but additionally be about how sicknesses elicit emotions of “isolation, dread, and anxiousness.” Blake, our eventual Wolf Man performed by Christopher Abbott, will get attacked by a werewolf and progressively morphs into the monster as his spouse Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) can solely watch because it occurs…at the least till it’s time for them to spend the remainder of the evening operating away from him.

On a simliar observe, the director considers Wolf Man a tribute to 2 of his favourite 80s physique horror movies, The Factor and The Fly. These motion pictures additionally discover the worry of somebody turning into (or being close to) one thing uncontrollable and harmful. It’s a barely completely different observe for Whannell, who’s been within the horror recreation ever for the reason that authentic Noticed, however strikes like Insidious and Improve deal with the phobia of demonic posessions or evil, manipulative beingse. He very a lot likes utilizing horror to “actually dig deep into somebody’s unconscious,” and with Wolf Man, he’s aiming to supply an “aural assault” and ship “one thing horrific and visceral” to audiences.

We’ll see if his chunk is as scary as his bark appears when Wolf Man hits theaters on January 17, 2025.

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