Howling into theaters on January 17, Leigh Whannell's Wolf Man is one of the most hotly-anticipated horrors of 2025, with every new tidbit of information making us even more desperate to see what magic The Invisible Man director has worked on another Universal Monsters classic.
Starring Christopher Abbott (Sanctuary, Poor Things), Julia Garner (Apartment 7A) and Matilda Firth (Starve Acre), Whannell's Wolf Man follows the fallout of husband and father Blake (Abbott) who is attacked by a mysterious animal on the grounds of the family's rural Oregon farmhouse.
While a full look at Abbott's transformation has yet to be revealed, the trailers suggest that his switch from man to beast is not exactly a pleasant one. In a new interview with Empire Magazine, Whannell goes into depth about his inspirations for the upcoming monster movie, especially David Cronenberg's 1986 body horror classic, The Fly:
What The Fly did that a lot of other practical-effects-driven horror movies from that time did not do was bring the tragedy out of these practical effects.
It wasn’t a joke in The Fly. It was there to illustrate someone who was dying of an illness […] I was like, ‘I’ve got to do that’. It’s not about being funny or icky or gory. This is about the tragedy of the human body falling apart.”
Whannell also promises that, while Abbott will take the brunt of the physical pain in the movie, it's Garner who is going to be the audience's emotional guiding light:
She’s going to be the emotional compass of this film. She’s going to be what Shelley Duvall was in The Shining. You don’t get scared in The Shining without Shelley Duvall. And so I was like, ‘I’ve got to find someone who can drink up the audience’s empathy.’ And she did an incredible job.
Of course, anyone who's seen Garner's work will be quick to agree with Whannell – Garner is a powerhouse performer and totally suited for this kind of role.
Entertainment Weekly also previewed an exclusive new still from Wolf Man (seen below) which teases some gnarly skin affliction taking over poor Abbott's lovely face, not so dissimilar to the pustules that poor Jeff Goldblum had to endure in his role as The Fly‘s Seth Brundle.
Don't miss Wolf Man in theaters on January 17.
