As Old Deuteronomy didn’t say in the non-existent musical Dogs, “A wolf man is not a werewolf”. Which is something I had to drill into my brain while watching the otherwise cool new Wolf Man movie. A flick I genuinely think is great, if it weren’t for all the wolf men.

This remake of The Wolf Man has nothing to do with the original Universal film… but that’s ok because director Leigh Whannel’s Invisible Man had little to do with its Universal villain either. The new Wolf Man is set in modern Oregon instead of, you know, Wales way back in the day. Which begs the question if there are werewolves running around Oregon, are they being confused with Bigfoot?

The film is about a family heading back to the old family farm to pack it up for sale. Sooner than you can “that was a neat car crash… wait, it’s stuck in a tree?”, they are set on by a loping wolf man and have to bunker down in the abandoned home for the night.

The atmosphere in this flick is out of sight. Leigh Whannell digs into his bag of tricks to deliver an amazing looking film with his usual cock-eyed cameras. And the way he shows the creature in the early scenes is great… especially the use of breath coming in just off-screen or a furry body loping in from the distance. There’s also a pretty terrific camera move he pulls as he switches viewpoints from the human perspective to that of the wolf.

The writing – when there is dialog – is also great. The way the small family talk to each other felt grounded and clever, especially for a horror film. But well over half the film has no dialog and that’s a little disappointing.

I’d have scored this film higher if it weren’t for the glaring problem of the wolf man. I’m guessing in a desire to have practical effects, the actual wolf man is kind of lame once we get a good look at him. This is a rare case where a little CGI would have helped. The biggest sin is when he runs on all fours… and looks exactly like a dude running on all fours. It’s not scary… it’s kind of goofy. The makeup application itself isn’t bad but the desire to not cover the head in a big wolf mask means the creature kind of looks like a dude with a makeup application.

All of this drags what was a great movie down to a very very good one. I still can’t argue with how the movie looks, the creative camera work, the atmosphere, the acting, and some genuinely good scares. I wanted to get it to an even higher score but it just slipped a little too much in the final act.

But the sick, sad thing is, it’s now my favorite werewolf movie regardless of its flaws. There aren’t a lot of good werewolf movies and this is one of the few that actually scared me. I liked it even more than An American Werewolf in London… and that might be sacrilege.

Score: 88