The new horror film Wolf Man, the next chapter in Universal's attempt to reboot its Classic Monsters series, was obviously inspired by George Waggner's similarly named 1941 film. However, according to writer-director Leigh Whannell, it also had some less predictable influences: Prisoners and Denis Villeneuve's Sicario.
“I'm a big fan of gothic horror cinema. I love what Tim Burton did with Sleepy Hollow and I love what Guillermo del Toro does,” the filmmaker gushes in the new issue of SFX magazinewhich features the Star Trek spinoff film Section 31 on the cover and hits newsstands December 31. “There's so much beauty in those gothic elements, like the fog and cemeteries on a moonlit hill.
“From a production design standpoint, I love all of those things, but I think I love them more as a viewer. I'm the right person to see those things, but I'm not the right person to do them,” Whannell continues. “When it comes time to create a monster, my mind immediately wants to place it in the real world and take a very grounded approach: we're not dealing with a fairy tale here, we're not dealing with a town story, we're dealing with something that could really happen.”
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Starring Poor Things' Christopher Abbott in the title role, Wolf Man follows Blake, a San Francisco-based writer, who inherits his childhood home after his father is finally declared deceased after having disappeared years earlier. In an effort to save his waning marriage to high-profile journalist Charlotte (Ozark's Julia Garner), the out-of-work Blake suggests they spend the summer in rural Oregon and reconnect to spend quality time with their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth).
However, upon their arrival, a mysterious beast in the woods runs them off the road and Blake is savagely scratched. The terrified trio successfully retreat to the farm, but with the animal lurking outside and Blake's wound worsening, they realize that the night's horrors are far from over…
Referencing his previous Classic Monsters adaptation, The Invisible Man, Whannell adds: “For both films, Stefan [Duscio, cinematographer] and I was heavily influenced by Roger Deakins' work with Denis Villeneuve, such as Sicario and Prisoners.
“If you look at those movies, they're beautifully photographed, not flashy. A lot of those movies take place in nondescript rooms, like a beige interrogation room in a police station, but somehow Roger Deakins can make that room beautiful. . – it's just its location, its lighting, its framing. So we relied a lot on that. I think that very grounded approach is the way to do it, because it's a way to convince the audience that this is not a fantasy. It's real.”