‘Classic monsters made contemporary’: The man behind Saw horror films brings Wolf Man to life

NEW YORK – There is nothing like an old-school monster movie, and the new horror film Wolf Man brings one of the hairiest and scariest back to the big screen.

Opening in Singapore cinemas on Jan 16, the film stars American actor Christopher Abbott as family man Blake, who decides to visit the remote farmhouse he inherited following the mysterious disappearance of his father.

But while travelling there with wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) during a full moon, he is attacked by an unseen animal that claws his arm.

And as the family barricade themselves inside the house, Blake starts to transform into something unspeakable.

This reboot of the classic 1941 film The Wolf Man is directed and co-written by Leigh Whannell, the Australian film-maker behind the popular Saw (2004 to present) and Insidious (2011 to present) horror franchises.

Screening the trailer at an event in New York in late 2024, he explains why he revisited the werewolf legend.

“These classic monsters, they’re so durable that you can make them contemporary,” says the 47-year-old.

Whannell also wrote and directed The Invisible Man (2020), a film starring American actress Elisabeth Moss. It was a reimagining of the 1933 science-fiction horror film of the same name and based on a 19th-century novel by English author H.G. Wells.

“That’s what I tried to do with The Invisible Man: Take this classic monster that’s been around for 100 years or more and put it in the modern world.

“And the idea of doing that with Wolf Man was really attractive because it’s such a known monster and the image of it is embedded in people’s minds, so I wanted to drag that into contemporary times.”

The subtext of the film is the idea of a loved one changing and becoming unrecognisable, adding a layer of psychological horror that Whannell enjoyed exploring.

“I usually let a film tell me what it wants to be and, with Wolf Man, the thing that seemed to be staring me in the face was (the idea of) terminal illness and degenerative disease, which dovetailed nicely with the story.”

The film-maker also went old-school when it came to the gore and werewolf transformation, most of which was accomplished through practical effects.

This was the most challenging part of the film and making horror movies in general, he says.

“Some people think it’s easy, but the technicality, precision and choreography of making something scary is the hardest thing.

“As horror fans know, it’s really hard to get right.”

To convey Blake’s terrifying metamorphosis, Abbott had to sit in a chair for between 2½ and 7½ hours each time his prosthetic make-up was applied.

But despite that and the dark subject matter, the 38-year-old – best known for the comedy-dramas Girls (2012 to 2017) and Catch-22 (2019) – easily snapped out of character between takes.

“He’s definitely not ‘method’,” Whannell says. “I’ve got many videos of him dancing to (1980s English pop band) New Order and doing impressions.”

“He has this weird ability where, when you call ‘action’, he goes there. Then you call ‘cut’ and he’s making fart jokes and you’re, like, ‘Where’s the guy who was just here?’

“It’s a switch that he just turns on and off.”

The director also praises Abbott’s co-stars Garner, 30, an American actress who won three Emmys for her role in the crime drama Ozark (2017 to 2022), and 10-year-old British actress Firth, who appeared in the science-fiction film Subservience (2024).

Casting the right actors is an underappreciated aspect of making horror films, he says.

“A lot of these movies are dealing with outlandish or heightened situations, and you can sell that to an audience only through characters who make it believable.

“And I was happy to have this cast because Julia, Chris and Matilda are allergic to inauthenticity, and you just believe what’s happening to them.”

• Wolf Man opens in Singapore cinemas on Jan 16.