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WOLF MAN

"Surprising Pro-Family Story"

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What You Need To Know:

WOLF MAN is a horror movie about a family that encounters a werewolf. Blake loves his wife and daughter. He would do anything protect his daughter, Ginger. However, he and his wife, Charlotte, are drifting apart. So, he suggests she and Ginger come with him to his late father’s isolated farmhouse next to a dark forest to pick up his father’s belongings. When they get there, however, a strange feral man attacks them. As the night progresses, Blake begins transforming into something unrecognizable.

WOLF MAN has a pro-family spirit. The early scenes with the father and the daughter are precious. Blake will do anything to protect his wife and daughter. The question is, will his commitment to protect his family survive his transformation into a werewolf? Director Leigh Whannel’s answer to this question mirrors the tragic mood permeating the old WOLF MAN movies starring Lon Chaney. It leads to a moving finale and a heartbreaking final image. However, unlike the old Chaney movies, WOLF MAN is peppered with strong foul language and very strong scary, slightly gruesome violence. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.

Content:

(BB, C, LL, VVV, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Strong moral, pro-family worldview promotes fatherhood and motherhood with redemptive elements and moments of sacrifice;

Foul Language:
About 12 obscenities (including three “f” words), two strong profanities using the name of Jesus, one GD profanity, and four light profanities;

Violence:
Some very strong and strong scary and intense violence includes scary scenes where werewolf noisily climbs a duck blind in a tree and noisily stalks people hiding in a farmhouse, man transforming into a werewolf hears loud sounds in one scene as his hearing becomes more acute and the sounds turn out to be coming from a large spider climbing a bathroom wall, werewolf attacks a car, a van and a tented greenhouse where people are hiding, child starts to fall through a slit in the top of the tented greenhouse where the werewolf tries to grab her, werewolf grabs man’s leg and tries to drag him away, werewolf chews off bottom if its leg after being caught in a bear trap, and then runs on all fours in pursuit of people running away from him, a character uses a knife and a rifle against a werewolf, etc.;

Sex:
No sex;

Nudity:
No nudity;

Alcohol Use:
No alcohol;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Father is strict and angry with careless young son, and, later, the son, gets angry at his daughter for disobeying and putting herself in danger, but the son apologizes and explains to her that his job is to make sure she’s always safe.

More Detail:

WOLF MAN is a horror movie about a man, his wife and their young daughter who encounter a werewolf when they go into a deep forest area to retrieve the personal belongings of the man’s late father who had an isolated farmhouse next to the forest. WOLF MAN has the striking, scary tragic mood of the old WOLF MAN movies starring Lon Chaney, leading to a moving finale, but the movie is peppered with strong foul language and very strong scary violence.

Then movie begins with young Blake hunting deer with his father, a survivalist who’s adamant about making sure Blake has all the tools to survive against deadly threats. Being a young boy, however, Blake, has trouble paying attention. This strongly angers his father because he considers it’s his job to protect Blake.

Blake goes searching for a young deer they’ve spied, but he goes off without telling his dad. When Blake’s father catches up with him, he starts to scold the boy, but he sees a man or some kind of animal has been stalking Blake. They rush back to a duck blind in a tree, and whatever it was starts climbing the tree. Blake’s father excitedly calls a friend. He thinks he’s found a person who got lost in the forest recently. This is no normal person, however, but Blake’s father managers to scare the stalker away.

Thirty years later, Blake is an unemployed writer living in the big city with his journalist wife, Charlotte, and their little daughter, Ginger. Blake and Charlotte have grown apart. So, Blake thinks it would be a good idea if she and Ginger go with him to pick up his late father’s personal belongings in the isolated farmhouse where the father still lived.

Driving a hauling van there, they get lost but run into the son of the father’s closest friend. He agrees to show them the way, but on the way, a man or animal suddenly appears in the road. The van crashes and the other man is flung out of the van. Something grabs him and hauls him off. It then starts attacking Dan’s family trapped in the van.

When it appears to leave, the make a run for it to the grandfather’s farmhouse. However, the thing that attacked them stalks them and tries to get into the farmhouse.

They fend it off, but Charlotte discovers that the thing bit Blake’s arm. As the night progresses, Blake begins to transform into something unrecognizable.

WOLF MAN happily has a pro-family spirit that’s rather satisfying. The early scenes with the father and the daughter are precious. Like his own father, Blake will do anything to protect his wife and daughter. The question is, will his commitment to protect his family survive his transformation into a werewolf? Director Leigh Whannel’s answer to this question mirrors the tragic mood permeating the old WOLF MAN movies starring Lon Chaney. It leads to a moving finale and a heartbreaking final image. However, unlike the old Chaney movies, WOLF MAN is peppered with strong foul language and very strong scary, slightly gruesome violence. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.

In the horror film genre, the characters are often faced with a potentially fearful situation where the “normal” order of things is disrupted. This disruption can be graphed by “binary oppositions,” i.e., Life/Death, Human/Animal, and Civilization/Jungle. For example, Dracula upsets the boundary between Life and Death because he’s both alive and dead, the Wolf Man confuses the line between the Human and the Animal, and King Kong upsets the boundary between Civilization and the Jungle when he escapes the theater to wreak havoc on New York City. Faced with this chaos, the characters must try to restore order by repairing the balance, frequently by killing or banishing the monster responsible for the disruption. Once the chaotic monster is destroyed or banished, the characters are then able to begin their lives anew.

What makes King Kong and the Wolf Man such tragic figures is the regret that comes when society has to kill them. For example, King Kong was just behaving like the animal that he is, while the Wolf Man has transformed into a monster through no fault of his own. In fact, the Wolf Man in the Lon Chaney movies is actually bitten because he was just defending another person. In the case of WOLF MAN, the father is just trying to protect his family. That’s what makes the tragedy that lies at the heart of this movie’s ending so palpable and sad.

The editors and writers of MOVIEGUIDE® prefer happy endings where Good Completely Conquers Evil. However, sometimes a tragic ending can resonate just as strongly, and sometimes even more so, because it shows a powerful example of sacrifice, the loss of something or someone extremely valuable, or a powerful moral, psychological and even spiritual lesson about life. Movies as disparate as CITIZEN KANE, VERTIGO, VON RYAN’S EXPRESS, HELL IS FOR HEROES, BRIAN’S SONG, and the original PLANET OF THE APES are potent examples of such tragedies. Of course, when Lon Chaney’s character is finally cured in HOUSE OF DRACULA, it’s a huge relief that’s extremely satisfying.


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