Interviews
Leigh Whannell on Shaking Up ‘Wolf Man’ Lore and Challenges of Making a Werewolf Movie [Interview]
Director Leigh Whannell is back with Wolf Man, a new interpretation of Universal’s classic monster that’s out in theaters today. The horror filmmaker takes a vastly different approach to the werewolf mythos, treating lycanthropy as a disease that yields no shortage of body horror.
Wolf Man doesn’t feature one transformation sequence; instead, it plays out over the course of the film and is handled completely via practical effects. Bloody Disgusting spoke with Whannell about the challenges of making a werewolf movie, tracking the multiple stages of transformation, and the film’s unexpected sources of inspiration.
In Wolf Man, the trouble starts when Blake (Christopher Abbott) travels back to his childhood home with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth), with a strange creature driving them off the road and leaving them vulnerable to attack. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot “Pierce” and “1941” plastered across Blake’s moving rental truck, an Easter egg referencing the original Universal Monsters film and its legendary makeup effects designer, Jack Pierce.
“You want to do it but not to a degree where you’re suddenly making a pastiche, an homage to something. There’s a place for that type of movie,” Whannell told Bloody Disgusting about his conservative use of Easter eggs in his latest horror movie. Instead, this hat tip is employed as an acknowledgment of the past and Whannell’s intentional lore departure.
He explains, “Like in Invisible Man, I felt like that one little scene where you see the guy covered in the bandages, it’s just a little nod to be like, ‘This existed, and I’m aware that I’m standing on the shoulders of these giants.'”
Due to Blake’s horrific affliction, this take on the Wolf Man bears more in common with The Fly than a traditional werewolf movie, but the unexpected reference points don’t end there. The animalistic nature of the beast and the isolated Pacific Northwest setting also evoke cryptozoology. It turns out that legendary cryptids like Bigfoot did influence Whannell’s interpretation of the classic character, at least in terms of the setting and Blake’s upbringing.
Whannell explains, “Actually, I did think about that. The thing about Bigfoot that I was drawn to with this is these isolated communities that have a story they tell, and they really believe in that story, these rituals. We, as humans, develop our own rituals within communities. You do that everywhere, it doesn’t have to be supernatural. But I love the idea of this isolated mountain community with their own set of rules that they keep from the outside world. That was very much part of this, trying to establish that.”
Christopher Abbott as Blake in Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell
Unlike most werewolf movies, the full moon doesn’t trigger lycanthropy at all. Instead of one memorable transformation under the moonlight, Wolf Man treats lycanthropy as a brutal disease that sets about rearranging Blake’s DNA, splicing it with something inhuman. In other words, Blake’s transformation is ongoing and happening in stages. Considering that Blake is constantly trying to battle against his gruesome illness and maintain his humanity, the transformation isn’t fluid or easy.
“Well it was twofold,” Whannell says of tracking the multiple stages of progression. “One was just the physical transformation, so we had that mapped out. On my office wall during pre-production we had this map of stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, and so you would see the physical changes. Then with Chris, he was really keeping track of the emotional stuff. He would slip in and out of certain things. He would slip in little movements that maybe people spot early on, little things he would do like just a movement of the head or a tic, and I love that. I love seeing that. I mean, mentioning The Fly, when you go back and watch that film, you see in Jeff Goldblum’s performance these little tics. It’s just the start of the journey, but that, to me, is the most fascinating part, the start of the journey. It’s also horrific. In real life, if someone is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, that first tremor, before it gets overwhelming, is nightmarish. So that’s what I was speaking to.”
Compared to his monster counterparts, the werewolf isn’t as prolific in horror as, say, vampires or zombies. While that’s likely owed a lot to the monster’s reliance on practical effects to sell its effectiveness, Whannell found the established lycan rules trickiest to maneuver around when it came to making his werewolf feature.
He tells us, “For me, it was dealing with the lore of this person turning into a wolf when the full moon comes out, and now they’re human again. The back and forth. I felt like I wanted my story to be more contained than that. Corbett [Tuck], my wife, and I co-wrote the film, and we both talked about wanting the film to feel more immediate than that. Some people may say, ‘Oh, there’s not enough meat on the bone; we’re not stretching it out enough,’ but we wrote the first draft during COVID. I felt very cut off from society, and everything felt very unsettled, and so, to write a hellish story that unfolds in one night felt right for that time.”
Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man is now playing in theaters nationwide.
(from left) Director of Photography Stefan Duscio and Director Leigh Whannell on the set of WOLF MAN.
Interviews
‘The Death of Robin Hood’ Director Michael Sarnoski on Brutal Violence and Reinventing the Legend
Michael Sarnoski (A Quiet Place: Day One, Pig) gives a darker spin on a classic ballad in The Death of Robin Hood, which sees a legendary outlaw confront his own violent legacy.
A24 releases the dark reimagining of the classic folk tale in theaters this Friday, June 19.
Hugh Jackman stars as a grizzled Robin Hood, who begins Sarnoski’s latest in a grim place of death and violence before a grave injury presents a rare chance at salvation.
In 13th-century grit and squalor, the violence in The Death of Robin Hood is especially brutal, setting up a stark contrast for the outlaw’s thematic journey in his final days. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting ahead of the film’s release, writer-director Michael Sarnoski explained that the visceral brutality at the film’s outset was both a reflection of period authenticity and in service of Robin’s story.
“It’s always a little bit of both,” Sarnoski explains. “The initial idea for the movie was I wanted to humanize these characters from this old legend and really understand them. So, part of that is understanding the authenticity of the period and studying the brutality of the old ballads. Both things evolved at the same time, because then it became this story about this person who was grappling with their own legacy of violence and their own folklore.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
He continues, “It was a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing where it was like, ‘Okay, the authenticity is where we’re going to access the humanity.’ But then, through that, we also have to access how these people felt about that violence. And because of that, we really have to make that violence feel human and real and brutal and not Hollywood-ized at all.“
But don’t expect The Death of Robin Hood to be too beholden to period accuracy; the filmmaker never wanted to lose sight of its characters or their humanity. “I was more trying to capture, in my mind and soul, what it might have felt like to live at that time. When you’re steeped in nature and all of its brutality, but also all of its divinity and spirituality, what would that just feel like on a deeper soul level? A lot of the research was focused on just trying to capture that human side of existing back then.”
The Death of Robin Hood avoids retreading the familiar origin story of the outlaw and his Merry Men; the past is a distant memory steeped in blood for this iteration of Robin Hood. Save for Little John (Bill Skarsgård), very little calls back to the familiar folklore fixtures and iconography.
“It wasn’t straightforward,” Sarnoski says of his writing process and choosing which characters to incorporate. “It kind of happened organically. I knew I just wanted the pieces that I needed for that character, but then at the same time, I wanted to acknowledge that he’s grappling with what he believes his life was, and the violence of that life and of that time. But then at the same time, he’s also not a fully reliable narrator. He has been jaded for decades and has just been steeped in that violence. Even he and Little John especially aren’t 100% sure which of these things were stories and which were real in some way, because I think even in our own lives we have that, where our memories become these stories that we just tell each other.”
“I wanted to make sure that we’re doing some justice to that Robin Hood legend, and there are a lot of references to that. I wanted to use it sparingly and specifically, but then also acknowledge that no one in this world is 100% sure who this guy was, not even the guy himself.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
While Jackman commands the screen as the world-weary outlaw, it’s Murray Bartlett (“The Last of Us”, Opus) who steals scenes as the enigmatic leper standing vigil over the Priory.
Bartlett’s complex performance, buried under unrecognizable costuming and prosthetics, surprised even Sarnoski in more ways than one. “The initial surprise was finding such a great actor who was willing to completely disappear. And that takes a lot of ego death and bravery and excitement for the pure creative, emotional side, and also bravery in the performance side of, ‘You’re not going to have 90% of the tools that you usually use. You’re going to have to do this with your eyes, your voice, and just your physicality.’ So, I think just the surprise of finding someone who was like that was the feature, not the bug. He was so excited about that, and he found it very liberating.
“Then, it sounds kind of obvious, but the next surprise was just you write this character on the page, and you’re like, ‘Okay, he’s supposed to have this depth, he’s mysterious, but he’s also gentle, and he becomes this almost teacher.’ In your mind, you’re like, ‘Okay, I think this character can work.’ But then you see Murray embody it and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is so far beyond what I ever could have hoped for.’ And it’s so moving and so human in spite of all the limitations on the performance.”
Sarnoski notes this character acts as the ferryman, right on the cusp of life and death. That, along with the period, also informed the Leper’s look, “In those old monasteries, they had these orchard cemeteries that were also where they buried the body. It’s this place of graves and growth. He has subtly different outfits that he wears depending on if he’s ferryman or orchardman. There was a lot of thought that went into all of that.”
Credit: Aidan Monagha
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