Whannell: “Wolf Man” Is “Pure Horror”

Australian actor-turned-filmmaker Leigh Whannell co-created both “Saw” and “Insidious” with James Wan, but in recent times he’s earned a name for himself directing two well-regarded thrillers – “Upgrade” and “The Invisible Man”. He’ll shortly return with “Wolf Man,” another reinvention of a Universal classic monster. The film follows Christopher Abbott as Blake, a man who returns to his childhood home in the Oregon wilderness – taking his family with him.

Attacked by something in the night, he begins to transform into something more beast than man – which puts his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) in serious peril. Whereas his take on “The Invisible Man” was essentially an ode to 90s domestic thriller with a sci-fi bent, “Wolf Man” is a more basic scarer but one that pushes back against the cliches of the films of this genre. He tells : Upgrade was more sci-fi action.

I was watching a lot of domestic thrillers when I wrote The Invisible Man, because I love that genre. [Wolf Man] is me saying, ‘I just wanted to make something that is straight-up, pure horror.’ I think of it as a companion piece to The Invisible Man.

I didn’t want this film to be a nostalgic or a retro Wolf Man film in any way. [I was] actually writing down in my notepad everything that’s been done, and then saying, ‘Okay, that’s the list of what not to do’. I’m hoping that you go in and say, ‘Oh wow, I haven’t seen that w.