Today is January 7 and the next full moon isn’t until January 13, but Universal has decided today’s the day to reveal the transformation scene from its new Wolf Man movie, which opens January 17.
The “human becomes wolf” moment is a crucial sequence in any werewolf movie—Rick Baker’s visceral work in An American Werewolf in London remains the all-time champ, even after four decades—and though fans knew Wolf Man would inevitably present its own version, it’s still a little odd to get a glimpse of Christopher Abbott’s character going through all that hairy agony out of context.
Still, props to the sound designers. That is a lot of icky-squicky bone snaps to inject into your earhole! Here’s the clip:
It’s kind of too dark to really see details—excellent howl, though—so maybe director and co-writer Leigh Whannell, who also made the 2020 Invisible Man remake, also includes a different transformation scene with better lighting? There’s only so much you can do in the woods, even with a full moon.
That’s Abbott (Poor Things) you see there, playing Blake, a man who returns to his childhood home in rural Oregon, where he’s visited by his estranged wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner of The Fantastic Four: First Steps), and young daughter (Matilda Firth). As the film’s synopsis tells us, the family is “attacked by an unseen animal and, in a desperate escape, barricade themselves inside the home as the creature prowls the perimeter. As the night stretches on, however, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable, and Charlotte will be forced to decide whether the terror within their house is more lethal than the danger without.”
Wolf Man‘s tag line promises “a new era of terror is here,” though from what we’ve seen so far (including the above scene), there’s not a hook as distinctive as Whannell’s re-imagining of Invisible Man as an epic tale of gaslighting followed by some very hard-earned revenge. But who knows what twists may yet appear amid the tropes? Find out when Wolf Man hits theaters January 17.
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Cheryl Eddy
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