Leigh Whannell Unpacks Wolf Man’s Horrific Influences

After Invisible Man and Abigail, Common’s obtained one other trendy tackle one among 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 few 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 have been on the coronary heart of werewolf tales. However his spin has some further weight: he wrote the script in 2020 in the course of the early pandemic days, so the movie can’t assist but in addition 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 regularly morphs into the monster as his spouse Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) can solely watch because it occurs…a minimum of till it’s time for them to spend the remainder of the evening working away from him.

On a simliar be aware, 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 changing 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 sport ever because the authentic Noticed, however strikes like Insidious and Improve give attention to the fear 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 offer an “aural assault” and ship “one thing horrific and visceral” to audiences.

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

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