Shortly after the director Leigh Whannell’s 2020 take on “The Invisible Man” became a box office success, he got a call from Universal asking if he would like to tackle Wolf Man, another one of the studio’s classic monsters, famously played by Lon Chaney Jr. in 1941. Whannell (best known as one of the creators of the “Saw” franchise) initially said no. “My first instinct was, ‘I just did a man monster. I don’t want to do some man trilogy,’” he said during a video call earlier this month.
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized he had a concept that made the character intriguing to him: What if he showed what it was like to undergo a transformation from the monster’s perspective? He went back to Universal, and they bit.
Like “The Invisible Man,” Whannell’s “Wolf Man,” out Jan. 17, takes one of the icons of cinematic horror and reframes him for the present day. Here he’s Blake (Christopher Abbott), an out of work writer who brings his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth), to his father’s remote Oregon home. His dad, considered missing for years, has finally been declared dead.
In edited excerpts from our conversation (which includes mild spoilers for “Wolf Man”), Whannell describes how the film draws on his own experiences watching loved ones with degenerative illnesses and why he has centered the women in his takes on these monster tales.
What made “Wolf Man” something worth pursuing for you?
It was the idea of seeing somebody change from their perspective. I love coming up with a visual language for a movie while I’m writing. Even with “Invisible Man,” the whole idea of the camera being this presence that would pan away from the actors and focus on an empty corner of a room, weaponizing empty space. I think the “Wolf Man” version of that was this idea of two people existing in a space, but not speaking a common language.
What is your relationship to the Universal monster movies?
When I was a kid, my gateway drug was a stop-motion animation called “Mad Monster Party” that had all the monsters in it. I remember really loving that and becoming obsessed with vampires and all those monsters. But I wouldn’t say that I’m this representative for the classic monster world. Someone like Guillermo del Toro has put himself forth as an ambassador. I’m coming at it from a different angle where I’m thinking, how do I modernize this and almost detach from the history, as opposed to enrich and stir up the history to remind people of these tales of yore.
By dragging the Wolf Man into the present day, what did you want him to represent?
When I was writing this, it was right in the middle of Covid, and I’m stuck at home. It felt like the world was off its axis somehow and it was very unsettling. I let that creep into the script. I had experienced close friends of mine suffer from degenerative terminal illnesses, and it is a real life horror story to witness. It just moves in slow motion. That became the bedrock of this movie. Once I had that, immediately the character became an average person. This was a tale about what happens when someone who’s just trying their best is suddenly picked by the universe for no good reason to change.
Right before we started shooting, I lost my brother-in-law. It was very shocking and sudden and tragic, and the film is dedicated to him. It was the north star of the movie for me: How quickly people are taken from you and how random it can be. For me, it was a bit of an emotional exorcism. But it was cathartic and I was thankful to have an artistic place to put all this sadness.
In both “The Invisible Man” and “Wolf Man,” you are elevating the woman, usually watching from the sidelines, to the center of the story. Why does that interest you?
I treat interviews when I’m doing press for a movie as free therapy, where I basically discover in real time what the hell I’ve been doing for the past couple of years. With “Invisible Man,” it seemed very clear. It’s an invisible man so I was like, “Well, who’s he stalking?” He’s terrorizing his ex-girlfriend. She’s going to be the focal point. With this story, one of the characters can’t speak. So automatically what you find in these situations is when somebody’s sick or somebody has a terminal illness, it’s about the people around them. The person that’s suffering isn’t always even conscious or there.
How did you start visualizing what it was going to look like from Blake’s perspective as he’s transforming?
I had this idea of the camera moving around the room and suddenly what seemed like gibberish became legible, and you realized there was some invisible wall that the camera had crossed through. I started researching wolves, how they see, the colors of their eyes. I was thinking about how animals hear. When we talk to our dogs, we all anthropomorphize our pets. I have whole conversations with my dog where I’m like, “What are you doing? Oh, you’re upset. What are you upset about?” You know that he’s just staring at you. They recognize tone and maybe up to 20 words. I was thinking about that. This classic Wolf Man story is a great way to use this because usually in Wolf Man stories, the transformation is very quick. I was like, what if you slowed this down and treated it more like a degenerative illness? I was thinking more of a film like “Still Alice.”
Are you considering a sequel to “The Invisible Man”?
I’m not. I mean, Universal obviously owns the rights to the character so they can do it. For me, I feel like that story was told. I love the way it ended, so I didn’t feel like I was the person to do the sequel. If they are going to do a sequel, then godspeed, they can find someone else.
