Wolfman

Wolfman marks the first film release of 2025 and the first film from this year that I got to see. Not only was it a pretty good horror film but it was a textbook perfect metaphor for generational trauma. The very small cast did a great job, and it was an excellent way to kick off the year. 2025 is going to be full of incredible movies just like the last few years have been. But hopefully this film is an indication that horror movies are about to improve, cause last year was a little rough.

We started off with our wolfy protagonist's childhood with some very obvious and heavy handed trauma. I feel like you can tell what this movie is going to be about pretty immediately. Then we go to the present day and he is a dad taking care of his daughter. So yeah, the generational trauma storyline is pretty well set up and pretty obvious. There is nothing wrong with it being heavy handed, just to be clear. That wasn’t a criticism necessarily, just an observation. It was clear and defined but not over the top, it would be pretty impossible to miss the themes of this movie.

Then we have the full family aspect of this trip. Because of how close Blake and his daughter are, Charlotte gets kind of shoved to the side. She is also the breadwinner so she simply doesn’t get to spend as much time with her child. They feel very estranged from each other. He thinks that taking the whole family on this trip to pack away his dads things is going to help them get closer together. We can assume that that does not actually go super well.

There is danger just about the second they enter Oregon. Oregon, by the way, is the perfect setting for horror movies. It is so beautiful but also incredibly creepy just inherently. Anyway they nearly crash into the current wolfman (which ends up being Blake’s dad, great twist but did totally see it coming) and he kills a local. And we spend the rest of the movie with Blake slowly becoming his father. Except in this case the turning into his father means turning into the wolfman.

Now mom does end up getting closer to her daughter, if only out of necessity because they are running from a creature that is trying to kill them and she is protecting her child. I love that the transformation for Blake was slow and though it was physically complete, he was clearly still in there somewhere. And that was perhaps the best part of the generational trauma storyline is that he did end up breaking the cycle. Not only did he kill his dad’s wolfman but he managed to hold off his transformation enough for his women to save themselves, even at the end, he really held himself back and basically asked Charlotte to shoot him.

The movie was a tight hour and 45 minutes, and was paced extremely well. It was the proper amount of creepy and it did a really wonderful job of building up tension. There wasn’t an overreliance on jump scares but there were some very well set up heart attack moments. The time clock of having to just survive the night is always great.

Overall it started off the year on a good foot. I think the very small cast played off of each other really well. And the theme of generational trauma was well written, well defined and extremely well delivered. I think I’d give it a solid 7/10 which is a really great way to start off 2025.