Leigh Whannell Unpacks Wolf Man’s Horrific Influences

After Invisible Man and Abigail, Common’s acquired one other fashionable tackle one in every 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 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 progressively morphs into the monster as his spouse Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) can solely watch because it occurs…not less than till it’s time for them to spend the remainder of the evening working 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 concern of somebody turning into (or being close to) one thing uncontrollable and harmful. It’s a barely completely different monitor for Whannell, who’s been within the horror sport ever for the reason that unique Noticed, however strikes like Insidious and Improve concentrate on 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 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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