“Wolf Man”: The Entropy of Lycanthropy

Woman with pricey hairdo and flannel shirt in a dark room viewed through a werewolf's perspective so the colors are weirdly red and blue around the shadows.

Life viewed through the eyes of a werewolf — warped colors and very few survivors.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Leigh Whannell’s reinvention of The Invisible Man was my favorite of the four whole films I saw in theaters in 2020 and smartly updated James Whale’s original mad scientist into a millennial tech-bro stalker who just wanted to dominate a single fed-up ex rather than the whole unwieldy world. Though Universal Pictures claims they’ve given up on their plan to reboot their classic monsters in an all-new shared universe (with or without a vaudeville act to string them together again), it wasn’t exactly counterevidential when they let Whannell take another crack at the catalog.

The next title on his checklist is The Wolf Man, but he’s dropped the “the” (it’s cleaner!) and adapted it to another modern metaphor rather than perpetuate the whole “gypsy curse” origin that would invite the wrath of the Romani on social media. The metaphor suits a smaller, more intimate thriller, a phrase that might not appeal to the millions who love their Universal Monsters big ‘n’ broad, or to fans of Twilight or Underworld who were hoping to see an entire team of vulpine antiheroes fighting a horror-fantasy gang war.

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“The Invisible Man”: The Dudebro Who Wasn’t There

Invisible Man!

She seeks him here, she seeks him there, she seeks that rascal everywhere!

I wasn’t instantly sold on writer/director Leigh Whannell’s revival of The Invisible Man. I saw the Claude Rains version over forty years ago on late-night TV, courtesy of our local horror-host Sammy Terry, but I’ve never revisited it since. I’d seen none of Whannell’s films to date, though Upgrade is on my to-do list. When this was first announced years ago as an entry in Universal’s “Dark Universe” plan to imitate Marvel’s success at interlocking products, I scoffed and moved on. I assumed the eventual results would be a muddled waste of time.

Two developments in its favor convinced me to give it a try: Elisabeth Moss, who was always great on Mad Men and deeply disturbing in Jordan Peele’s Us; and unusually positive word-of-mouth. Horror films aren’t an easy sell for me, but the glowing reviews weren’t the usual fans raving about super awesome epic kills. The trailer telegraphed some of the zeitgeist-eriffic themes at play, and yet I was curious to know more.

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