Wolf Man’s major themes have to do with parents and children, specifically around ideas of communication and trauma. Blake’s dad loved him but communicated it horribly and that scarred Blake. On the flip side, Blake tries to be better with Ginger, and is, for the most part, except there are times when his trauma comes out and he acts like his father. The whole “devolves into a werewolf” thing is symbolic for Blake turning into his father. Which is why the wolf man who infects him ends up quite literally being his dad, Grady.
We can dive into some more details of how all this gets explored, but there’s not too much more going on. So if you get the gist of it and want to stop reading, you definitely can. Otherwise, let’s get explaining.
Blake And Ginger
In the opening scene, Blake’s dad is present but a jerk. We then cut to 30 years later. Blake’s now a dad. As he and Ginger walk down a New York City street, we see he’s overloaded with gifts for her, and she’s clearly dressed herself. Those are visual choices that signal to the viewer that Blake spoils his daughter, giving her the opposite of the doomsday-survivalist childhood he had.
Dialogue then reinforces the visuals: Ginger wants ice cream even though she already had hot chocolate and she pushes back when Blake says no. And, finally, action puts an exclamation point on this dynamic: Ginger won’t listen when her dad asks her to get down from [forgive me, I’m blanking on what it was. Construction?]. So he ends up dropping his “pushover dad” shtick and yelling at her. In that moment, he’s acting the same way his own father did. Using a parent’s protective instinct as an excuse for his anger.
The whole “Ginger can read minds” thing becomes this mechanism to show that she understands her dad loves her even when his behavior conveys otherwise. Blake also knew his dad loved him, but his dad wouldn’t express it. This is one of the ways he’s tried to be better and do better.
Charlotte And Ginger
On the flip side to Blake and Ginger, you have Charlotte and Ginger. The mother and daughter don’t have the same relationship. Charlotte’s more work-focused (apparently, since her entire character is pretty under-developed) to the point of feeling disconnected from Ginger.
Blake And Charlotte
How does Charlotte enter the picture? She walks in on the phone. Whannell could have had her do anything. But he went with the phone because it highlights the communication gap. She’s talking to others, outside of the family, rather than coming home and being with her family. It’s an interruption rather than a participation, which is why Blake asks her to leave the room, even though the call isn’t offensive or problematic.
Remember how this scene wraps up? Blake says his dad had finally been pronounced dead. Ginger asks him if he’s sad. And Blake responds…
- Blake: I wish I’d known him better. But he always made me afraid of him, so as soon as I was old enough, I left. We hadn’t spoken in a long time because I chose not to. And now that I can’t speak to him—I certainly want to…
The very next scene is where Blake tells Charlotte he doesn’t think they’re doing well. The inability to talk to his dad, to make things right with his dad, is what spurs him to bridge this gap that had formed with Charlotte. Instead of falling into the same state of no communication, he talks to her. That starts to make a difference. This whole early portion of the film positions the importance of communication.
Blake Becomes The Wolf Man
As Blake becomes the wolf man, Whannell specifically highlights his increasing inability to communicate. Charlotte says over the radio that he can’t speak. The camera switching perspectives always emphasizes the communication gap that’s forming/formed. At the very end, Ginger understands, without Leigh saying anything, that he wants it to be over.
Rewatch the movie with “communication dynamics” in mind and you see how often Whannell finds a way to make a moment about what’s being said or not said or how it’s said. That’s what you do to establish and explore the primary theme.
I think Blake’s transformation is a metaphor for him becoming more like his father. You see the similarities, even before the infection. Sure, for the most part, Blake’s sweet and doting. But he has flashes of aggression and anger. And those were when things were good. You could argue his dad’s death brings up a well of trauma and grief that causes all of that negativity to manifest.
In a realistic movie, over the course of a few weeks, Blake would grow more depressed, more aggressive, and finally abusive. Charlotte and Ginger would have to flee and start a life without him, as he stayed in Oregon, on the farm, and really became like his father.
In a fantastic movie that defamiliarizes reality, you can condense all of that to “his dad has become a werewolf and infects Blake, so now, after just a few hours, he’s also a werewolf and acting like his monstrous father.” Whannell’s previous film, The Invisible Man, also used the monster’s gimmick as a metaphor for domestic abuse.
A similar thing happens in The Shining. There’s a realistic version of its story that has no ghosts. Instead, you see Jack turn increasingly to alcohol. Until he turns destructive and abusive. In the fantastic version of the story that we actually get, Jack’s alcoholism is introduced but not elaborated on so directly. Instead, it’s turned into context that becomes the subtext of his possession by the Overlook Hotel.
Ginger And Scars
When the family first gets into the house, having escaped the werewolf, Ginger asks Blake if Derek’s dead. Blake responds: Most likely, he did die. I’m so sorry that this happened to you. It’s my job to protect you. And I didn’t. I put you through something very scary, and I’d never be able to forgive myself if this stayed with you, you know? If it scarred you. Sometimes, when you’re a daddy, you’re so scared of your kid getting scars that you become the thing that scarred them.
Blake becoming a werewolf embodies that idea of him being this scary, horrific thing that could cause a scar. Just like his dad. But, it seems like, ultimately, Ginger will be okay, and that’s because Blake made sure she knew she was loved. Even when Blake could no longer communicate that himself, even when he lost himself, Ginger knew he had loved her and would have continued to if this bad thing hadn’t happened to him.
That dynamic establishes this difference between the man and the monster. And allows Ginger to, hopefully, remember the man rather than the monster; to look at his “transformation” as a sickness, as a curse. It helps preserve the image of her father versus the wolf man.
Wolf Man ends with Charlotte and Ginger in the valley Blake had wanted them to see. When he told Charlotte about the valley, he said: There’s this valley not far from the farm. It’s between these mountains, and no matter how many times you see it, the view makes you feel like everything’s gonna be okay.
That’s the subtext of the final shot of Charlotte and Ginger. They’re at the valley, in the early morning dawn, holding hands, and in that quiet moment, after all the horror of the night, the valley’s there to remind them that everything will be okay.
What About The Ants And The Wasp?
I’m usually not stumped on visuals. But this is the closest I’ve felt in a long time. And I’d argue that’s because the film doesn’t necessarily earn that opening shot. It’s a cool visual that establishes a tone. But in terms of “deeper meaning”, it feels a bit abandoned.
I think the safest, most superficial explanation would be that it shows the hunger of nature. Or the ruthlessness of nature—that danger in the world, the danger parents are aware of and why they feel so protective over their children. That would tie back to a lot of Blake’s dad’s initial dialogue, when they’re hunting, to the death’s cap mushrooms, to the werewolf itself. What is the werewolf but this embodiment of hunger and danger?
If you want to reach a little more, you could argue the ants are a visual metaphor for trauma. And that’s what’s going on inside Blake the entire time.
I like to think of it as a metaphor for mortality. Blake says at one point that we never know how much time we’ll have and he just wants to spend it being happy with his family. We’re all wasps, with ants gnawing away at us until we can no longer fight them.
Leigh Whannell’s Explanation Of Wolf Man
Alright, so you’ve heard what I have to say. Let’s look at Leigh Whannell’s own words. As always, I only do this after I write my analysis, as a way to check how close or far off my interpretation was.
In talking with The Hollywood Reporter, Leigh explained there had been a scene where we meet Blake’s mother, who has ALS and isn’t long for the world. But the scene was removed. He elaborated:
- Leigh:
- I wrote this movie with my wife, but usually, I’m writing on my own in this insular little bubble in my office. And you’re never quite sure which themes people are going to receive, especially if you’re not talking about them overtly and they’re more subtextual. People are smart, and critics are intelligent viewers of movies, so you feel like they’ll get through to them.
- Invisible Man felt like it was about one thing; my North Star in that movie was domestic abuse and stalking and gaslighting and all these issues. But Wolf Man feels like it’s about many things. It was written during that chaotic year of Covid and lockdowns, and instead of putting the film on rails and giving it one theme, I just threw everything in there that I was feeling about parenting, disease, illness and marriage. So Corbett and I really layered it, and I kept thinking, “Is this going to feel messy on a thematic level?”
- I had a close personal friend who died of ALS. It was a long journey that she had with it, and it was a slow-motion nightmare. She started off walking with a cane, and suddenly, she was in a chair and she couldn’t walk at all. This all took place over many years, and it was tragic and horrific. So that was in my mind, and I wanted people to draw the connection between what Blake’s going through and [real-world] disease. So that now-deleted scene with the mother was in there for that reason, but then you go through the editing process and you have to kill your darlings. That’s definitely one that hurt when I took it out, and I hope that people don’t come away from Wolf Man with less of an understanding of what it is really about because I took that scene out. I hope that people still receive the idea that this is about illness and losing someone you love to illness and not being able to talk to them anymore. So maybe that scene would’ve hammered that theme home with a sledgehammer or at least made a finer point on it.
- In a discussion with the British Film Institute, Leigh said:
- The first draft of this film was written in 2020, right in the hot zone of that Covid lockdown, when it was first happening, when everybody was locked away, nothing was open, the streets were empty. It was a very disconcerting time. And so my wife and I, who co-wrote it, poured a lot of our anxiety about this time into the script and it’s all there. It’s not directly about Covid, but everything you mentioned: infection, but not just that, the anxiety, the isolation.
- It was a very strange time in human history. I remember thinking, “Wow, I bet there’s going to be a bunch of Covid movies that come out,” and I haven’t really seen that yet. But a lot of times, horror movies talk about things indirectly. I think Wolf Man does indirectly talk about Covid. During that time, I was parenting three young kids and it was really tough. I felt that I was failing as a parent because I was struggling to entertain them at home and to keep them interested. So that’s in the script as well. It’s not just about infection, it’s about parenting, feeling like you’re failing at parenting and trying to protect your kids from something.
Man, I can’t get over him saying, “I kept thinking, ‘Is this going to feel messy on a thematic level?’” I’d say, yeah, it was a lot messier than Invisible Man. Mostly because it’s so contained. It touches on a lot of ideas, but I don’t think it has enough scenes that actually develop them in a meaningful way. And I feel like having Blake’s dad be the werewolf that infects him muddies the waters a bit more. Because it mixes Blake’s personal trauma with the idea of illness. And trauma can be an illness, but it seems like they wanted to speak more directly to a random sickness or disease. At that point, I think it’s actually better to have the werewolf be a stranger rather than the father. It creates clearer lines of division between those themes. Sure, you lose the “twist”, but is something as obvious as “his dad was the wolf man!” really a great twist?
Overall, though, I think we mostly got it. We highlight the marriage issues, the stress as a parent, and Blake falling prey to some kind of affliction that makes it so he can’t communicate. I failed to touch on the pandemic subtext. But I wouldn’t say the movie is about the pandemic so much as the pandemic was a catalyst to explore other topics that the movie is actually concerned with.
Cast
- Blake Lovell, Wolf Man – Christopher Abbott
- Young Black – Zac Chandler
- Charlotte Lovell – Julia Garner
- Ginger – Matilda Firth
- Grady – Sam Jaeger
- Werewolf – Ben Prendergast
- Derek – Benedict Hardie
- Written by – Leigh Whannell | Corbett Tuck
- Directed by – Leigh Whannell
