‘Wolf Man’ has been getting mixed reviews, but it sparked our interest as a Lee Whannell project, co-written with his wife. Join us as we discuss the film’s connections to the Saw franchise, its ties to the failed Universal Dark Universe, and its unique take on the werewolf transformation narrative.

We pick apart the thematic elements influenced by the pandemic, tackle the emotional nuances of the characters, and debate the effectiveness of its practical effects and transformation scenes. Don’t miss our in-depth analysis, critical moments, and our final thoughts on whether ‘Wolf Man’ stands out in the werewolf genre. Share the episode with friends and subscribe for more horror movie discussions!

Episode 444, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week, uh, we’re doing something that Craig picked another brand new film, and this is titled Wolf Man. Gosh, it just came out, I think, uh, in January of this year, and I believe it’s getting mixed reviews. The director, I, you know, I didn’t know anything about this when you sent it to me.

In fact, I just pulled it up and started playing it. I didn’t read a darn thing, so I was really surprised to see this looks like a, a Leigh Whannell passion project, ell, whatever his name is. Yeah. Many of you might remember him as being part of the duo behind the original saw franchise. He’s gone off to do a lot of different things since then.

He’s done some acting as well. He’s got a voice in this. Mm-hmm. But in this case, he’s the director and the writers are him and his wife and it seems like something they put together during the pandemic and it kind of shows, it’s got some thematic elements there. 

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know if it was a passion project.

I mean, I, a different director was attached at some point, and it was originally gonna star Ryan Gosling. When that fell through, the director left and Gosling left with him, I think, or vice versa. I don’t remember. 

Todd: Well, I guess it was gonna be originally. Part of the universal Dark Universe way back when.

Right, 

Craig: right. But then the Mummy tanked so bad, which I’m not surprised. It was terrible. I hated it. I never saw it. I’m not a big Tom Cruise fan anyway. I don’t know. It just wasn’t great. And that’s too bad. ’cause you know, they’re still gonna keep making these movies. They’re just not gonna do them as quickly, and they’re not necessarily.

Interesting. Linking ’em together. Yeah, right. Exactly. They’re not going for like a dark Avengers type thing or anything like that. 

Todd: Well, let’s be honest. It’s kind of a dumb idea. I mean, I get where they’re going, you know, they’ve got all these properties. It’s kind of what they’re known for since putting universes together is a big thing now.

And of course it’s a huge money maker if you can make it work, at least like Marvel has, but nobody else has really been able to do it. DC’s kind of foundering in their attempts to do it. Yeah, and this whole notion that you can take Frankenstein and the Mummy and Dracula, I mean, as a thematic group of monster movies that came out at a particular time, that sort of set a stage, that’s one thing, but like.

To then say that now we can connect them all in this grander universe is, uh, I always thought that was gonna be tricky for them. 

Craig: Yeah, I guess it would be tricky. I don’t know, it just seems like it should be such a cool thing to be able to do. At least. I don’t know. It, it makes the little kid me really excited, you know, to Jason versus Freddie kind of thing, but it’s never worked, you know?

Like, no, I liked Van Helsing with Hugh Jackman. Oh, it’s not a good movie. I still enjoyed it. The League of Extraordinary Gentleman was bad. So it’s been tried before and it’s never worked. I wish it would. Yeah. I think people are even at this point, exhausted with Marvel, and maybe I’m wrong. I mean, I, I’m sure those movies and shows are continuing to make tons of money, but I’m exhausted with it so 

Todd: everyone I 

Craig: know.

Is exhausted. Maybe it’s just our age, though. Who knows? Maybe, I don’t know. It’s just too much to keep track of and now like they’re moving into a different phase. I’m like, I don’t care. 

Todd: I lost track of this a 

Craig: long time ago. Yeah, right. I think I’ll skip this next phase. It’ll be, it’ll be all right. So anyway, this is a remake or, well, I mean, kind of a remake of, I don’t know, what year was it?

It was sometime in the thirties. One of the original, yeah. Or maybe the original Wolfman. I don’t know. And I like it, the movie a lot and there are lots of things that I like about it, but I like that it kind of has that old school, not necessarily any particular studio, but just kind of a feel. It’s very isolated.

It’s a very small cast. Yeah. It’s a lot of, you know, old Dark House spooky woods. I, I just love that feel of it. And I think it balances well, those classic elements. But isn’t just a carbon copy of things we’ve seen before. Right. He’s experimenting with some new things. He’s playing with lore and visuals and, and all kinds of things.

So, I mean, just going in, I told you this wasn’t something that we had planned. It wasn’t even something that was on my list. I just happened to be scrolling through my streaming services to see what was new and I saw that this was available on Peacock love horror movies, obviously. So that’s a given. I probably would’ve watched it anyway, but I was particularly interested in this one because it’s stars.

Julia Garner. Yeah. Who I’m a big fan of. Have you ever seen her in anything? I feel like I have, but nothing’s coming to mind. She’s gonna be the new Silver Surfer in the new Fantastic four. She was great in Ozark. I think she was either nominated for or won Emmy’s for her and, and as far as I’m concerned, that was a great show and Jason Bateman was the star, as far as I’m concerned.

She was the star of that show. Oh yeah. Within the first season. She was the character that I was most invested in and remained most invested in throughout. Oh, she was just fantastic. She also, I mean, she’s a brilliant actress. She, is she related to Jennifer Garner? I don’t think so. She played. Anna Delvy, that fake Hess who scammed all those rich people.

Oh, I did see that. That was great. Yeah. Oh yeah. I liked her in that. She was so funny, and she had talked with that accents and called everyone bass. She was, that was good actually. She was so, I mean, but I can understand why you potentially wouldn’t recognize her, because she really kinda melted into that role.

I mean, I don’t know. She had different hair and there some prosthetics and things, but Right, right. I was probably a little more excited than our typical listeners would be about the Madonna biopic that was supposed to happen. It was gonna be written and directed by Diablo Cody, who I think has a great Yeah, sensibility, female voice, uhhuh, and great sensibility.

And this Julia Garner was cast as Madonna, which I think was perfect casting. She looks almost just like her. Yeah, for sure. When she was young, blonde ambition, tour era. I mean, she’s even got the hair. Yeah. And I thought, you know, she’s a great actress, you know, she’s gonna be perfect for this. And then of course it all fell through, I think, because Madonna’s impossible to work with.

Who knows? Whatever. Anyway, I’m a big fan of hers. That’s initially what drew me to the movie. I watched it by myself because Alan wasn’t home. He was doing something I don’t remember. And I really liked it. And I texted you right away. Yeah. Not should we do it for the podcast, but just it was really good.

Uhhuh. So the next time we were talking about what we should do, I was like, can we do it? So thanks. I 

Todd: appreciate it. Here we are. Yeah, no, it’s fun. I, I, I like these kind of movies and I think this is the kind of film you’re either, you’re either in the mood for or you’re not, because it’s full of action. It really is.

But it’s a story that is very intimate. It focuses around three people, this guy named Blake, his wife Charlotte, and his daughter Ginger. It opens though with Blake as a child, with his father, and I think the opening really does set the tone of what this movie is going to be. It’s strikingly beautiful to 

Craig: look at, and when I see something like when some of the first shots are these beautiful landscapes, the first shot actually is really strange.

It’s a, a very, I don’t know, kind of disturbing closeup of a colony of ants, like attacking a, a hornet or something, which I get what he was going for, but I, why, well, I read what he was going for. He was, you know, he wanted to, you know, show the, I don’t know, carnal nature of. Animals or the violent nature of animals or the animal kingdom or something.

And I get it in a way that wouldn’t defend us too much, I suppose. I guess I get it. It’s just, it never comes back. Like there’s it, it’s never called back to like, yeah, if, if the main character were like a bug scientist. It 

Todd: was a bit, you’re right. It was a bit much. I mean, if you’re gonna make that the opening scene of your movie and spend like 60 seconds on it, you know, you really maybe want it to thematically tie in a little better than that semi-abstract way.

Craig: Yeah, I get it. And it was a cool shot. It was very, you know, national Geographic or whatever, except the sound was really gross and scary and unsettling. But then they live on this farm in some sort of mountainous area where there’s this amazingly. Picturesque valley between these two mountains and his dad talks about, you know, it’s, it’s so beautiful.

You never get tired of looking at it. But 

Todd: I’m gonna predict what, what you were about to say. Whenever you see these high, big shots of the mountains going over, it instantly makes you think of the shining. 

Craig: Well, I mean, even more so when the family eventually moves back there and we track them in their car from above Yep.

Like we do at the beginning of every movie, which is fine. It always looks great. 

Todd: Yeah. Stanley Kubrick had no idea the standard he was setting when he put those opening shots together. So many horrible movies we do are 

Craig: just like it. It’s so funny. It has become such a typical convention like it’s, it’s.

Insane. Mm. But yeah, I mean, you tell them about, you know, what happens in the prologue because it’s important. And of course you don’t know this going in, but it serves as a really lovely framing device for the whole movie. 

Todd: It really does. I love it. Well, we do get some text on the screen. I don’t really wanna read that, but, uh, it’s about a hiker going missing in 95, yada, yada.

Craig: And people got, think he got like the forest fever or something? I don’t remember. It was like, it made me think of beaver fever from zombies, beaver fever. The native, the native word for it. Transferred something to like dog face or, yeah, something. I don’t remember. 

Todd: I didn’t, I didn’t bother to look this up to see if this was actually a thing on.

I kind of doubt it. So father and the son are just like. Alone and they’re walking through this beautiful woods, but it’s established, almost insanely driven into you how protective he feels about his son. Mm-hmm. He says, let’s go. We’re gonna go hunting. And so they go hiking through this gorgeous forest with this very ethereal music playing behind them.

Clip: Ah. Don’t go anywhere near those. These are death cap mushrooms. And they ain’t kidding either one of those. You’ll be wearing a toe tag real quick, unless someone’s got a brand new liver line around for you.

Blake, did you hear what I just said? Yes sir. What did I say? Don’t eat the mushrooms. What are they called? 

Craig: Oh, 

Clip: see, this is what I’m talking about. You’re not hearing me. You’re off in your own goddamn world somewhere. This place is beautiful. It’s also dangerous. You can survive if you know exactly what to do.

Yes, sir. 

Todd: And you always have to listen to me, right? Yeah. Always listen to me. And he about, after about three more steps, he turns around and says, what is I just saying to you? And he’s like, uh, uh, uh, something about the mushrooms and what’ll happen. What were they called? You gotta listen to me. You gotta listen to me because in the woods, you could die.

It’s not hard. People can be taken from you just like that. It can happen like that. And I’m gonna make god damn sure you know how to survive. It’s like, okay, dad. 

Craig: Yeah, I know. But he, like, he, he comes across as very regimented. I don’t know if we, if we know or not, but he, I, I would guess based on his characterization, he’s probably ex-military.

More military. Yeah. Yeah. Which is great. There’s nothing wrong with that. And the lesson that he’s teaching is, he’s absolutely right. He is. I was really interested on hearing your perspective on this, because I think that really 85% of this movie is about parenting. Yeah. And, and protecting your kids. And so.

I wonder, like, I wondered if you related to that moment, like I can imagine Yeah. That I would probably be more like that dad, ah, than people might expect. 

Todd: You know, I, um, I a hundred percent relate to it. I’m sure every parent relates to it, and I’m sure it doesn’t take much imagination, you know, to put yourself in this father’s shoes even if you don’t have kids, especially when your son is really young.

My son in particular living in be and growing up in Beijing, what he did for the first few years of his life, thankfully. Just a side note, China is probably physically the safest place you could possibly live. Violent crime is very rare here. I think that has a lot to do with the fact there are cameras everywhere.

Nobody wants to do anything. They know they can get caught, but I mean, it’s really, really nice place to raise a kid in that way. And also, people are very kid oriented here, so you kind of know that if your son was ever lost or there was some issue, I would worry less about a lot of things. I wouldn’t really worry that someone was gonna abduct him, and I probably wouldn’t worry that nobody would help him either, because instantly people would probably jump to the aid and try to sort things out.

So there’d be the language barrier would be a problem. The thing I worried about the most was living in Beijing was his physical safety. Around the street and on the sidewalks, because traffic is crazy. People are, don’t always follow the rules, and there are scooters zipping around everywhere, and the streets can be very crowded.

I don’t mean necessarily just jam packed full of traffic, but there are cars parked on the sidewalk. There are cars parked in the street. Then there are cars coming down the street, whether they’re fast or slow. And then there are occasional coming outta nowhere, scooters that are zipping around through all of this.

And so it’s very easy even walking down the sidewalk for somebody to not pay attention and come out and bean you. You know? And I was terrified that, uh, this little toddler would get away from me and he did once or twice or he would just run gleefully away like he was playing a game right? Right.

Towards the street. And I would run after him and I would grab him and before he could even talk, I would look at him and I would make it absolutely clear. Like the only time I would put on my mean dad face was, you must hold my hand. You cannot not hold my hand. And I tried my best to scare the living daylights out of him, right.

To make him know that that is unacceptable. So yeah, I totally get this. 

Craig: A hundred percent. Oh boy. Yeah. I, I don’t know. I mean, my parents were great parents, but like, I, I think they were very clear. You know, I, I, I was a small town kid. My grandparents on my mom’s side were rural and I spent a lot of time on the farm and hunting and in the woods and those kinds of things.

And don’t eat those mushrooms. Stay close to me. I mean, these are really important, important things for kids to understand what the consequences can be. You went on hunting trips with your dad, didn’t you? Didn’t you guys hunt? Yeah, we hunted. Yeah. 

Todd: I mean, we didn’t You had guns? 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: I mean, that’s a whole different level of, you know, safety and consideration that I never had to deal with.

Right, 

Craig: right, right. Yeah. And, and, and just, I mean, even around here, I don’t think it’s as big of a threat, but if you get lost in the woods in America, you could die. Yeah. You could be lost in the woods forever. So I, I totally understood. Yes, it was a harsh approach. He seems like kind of a harsh guy, but he’s right, because when he is focused on, you know, trying to aim at a deer that they see, the deer gets spooked and runs away, and he turns around and his kid is gone and he runs looking for him, and we see that the kid, you know, I’m sure nearby, but in a different part of the forest.

What he was trying to do, we learned later, is he was trying to get a better shot at the deer. He was trying to get around it or something, but while he’s out there, he’s looking through his scope and it’s blink and you miss it. But as he pans across the horizon, there’s something there. It looks like a man.

Yeah, I was thinking like Sasquatch. Yeah. Yeah. Get quick. Yeah. I mean, it’s so fast. In fact, the first time I watched it, I did watch it again. I just watched it just now. But the first time I watched it, I didn’t see it at all. I must have blinked or something, but, and then the dad shows up and I think, and he yells at the kid and, and the kid tries to explain what he was trying to do.

But then they hear some movement and I think that they find the deer 

Todd: torn up, right? There’s a deer blind there, so they have to climb up into the deer blind. And honestly, if you didn’t know this was a horror movie going in, you could also think this is a bear. And that’s sort of what the dad believes.

Sure. And it makes perfect sense. It even kind of looked like a bear when he saw it through the scope in that split second. And sure enough, when they’re up there, you’re right, they hear noises down below, he gets up, he looks, and they do see through the scope, a freshly torn apart deer carcass. 

Craig: Yeah.

Whatever it is, comes up the ladder of the deer. Blind and scratches at the. Door. Mm-hmm. And, and they’re huddled a against the far wall, the back wall. And the dad is prepared to shoot this, whatever it is, if it comes over. But it doesn’t, it goes away. And he kind of gets a glimpse of it through his sights.

And he takes a shot at, he knows he missed, but I don’t think he thinks it’s a bear because as soon he gets home, he calls his friend and is like, I saw it. And his friend’s like, what the dog man or whatever, and he’s like, seriously, I saw it. And we have to protect our kids. Yeah. The, the son overhears that, and that’s when we jump to 30 years 

Todd: later.

Right. You’re right. And it, when he calls him, by the way, it’s on a short wave radio. I mean, it’s, it’s a really important point that these guys are so isolated. There’s no phone line out there. That’s right. No cell service either. Right? 

Craig: No cell service. Of course. I don’t even think they’re on the grid. Like I don’t even think they’re on the electrical grid.

No, they’re not. They’ve got like a everything’s generator, which either that must have been a really powerful generator or they spent a lot of money on gas 

Todd: for sure, 

Craig: because not only, I’m jumping ahead a little bit, but not only does it power a barn, a greenhouse and a big farmhouse, but when they eventually, when they turn it on, when they, when the grown son and his family come back to the house and he turns the, the, he like flips the switch for the generator.

It comes on and every light. In every building comes on. Right. Well, 

Todd: you know, they upgraded to LEDA long time ago, so, uh, that might have helped. 

Craig: That’s funny. 

Todd: Yeah. Turn off some of those lights when you leave the room. Dad. Yeah. Minor point on that generator. I’m sure we’ll get back to it later, but that generator would’ve had to be so freaking loud and when it first fires up, it’s really, really loud.

And then we never hear the generator again for the rest of the movie. 

Craig: Not really small point and sound is important. Yeah. And I’m gonna have a little bit of a complaint about it in, in a little bit, but in present day, what’s his name? Blake. The kid is of course an adult and he lives with his wife Charlotte, and his daughter Ginger, which is a shout out to Ginger Snaps.

I don’t know. Their family dynamic seems kinda weird. Yeah, there’s clearly tension between the mom and the dad. The dad and the daughter seem to have a really tight relationship, but his father’s influence has clearly worn off on him because he is protective of her much in the same way that his dad was protective, but he’s not scary enough, so she doesn’t really respond to it as well.

Yeah, and he also kind of has a softer approach where he explains to her, which I think is wonderful, this is, this is probably the better way to approach it. He explains to her that as. Her dad, it’s his job to protect her. Mm-hmm. And I 

Todd: think kids can understand that they can. And, and this is a very modern parenting approach that these two have.

And I think it’s solid. You know, there’s even a point later in the movie, I think, where he sits down and he sits her down and intentionally apologizes to her for something that I don’t think my dad ever would’ve thought, I need to apologize to you for, you know, no. Like, I apologize for putting you in this position, or I apologize that you had to see that, or something like that.

That’s definitely very modern parenting approach. So there is that difference between how he approaches it versus his dad approaches it. And I thought that was pretty believable. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, it was. But I also think throughout the course of the movie that he underst, I, I think he gets why his dad was the way he was.

Oh yeah. But. This is also a, a great illustration of how you can learn from your parents and you can do better. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, the, he and the wife seem to have some tension for whatever reason. I think they’re both writers, right? I think 

Todd: so, 

Craig: yeah. Not that it’s really all that important. His career’s not going very well.

I think that she is super busy, is doing fine, but she’s, she’s stressed out, right? And, and uptight and, and they’re kind of bickering in front of the kid. And the kid’s like, when I grow up, I’ll never fight in front of my kids. This all happens very quickly. And it culminates with, he has received a notification that his father has finally been.

Pronounced deceased, I guess he’s been missing for a long time. Why? And, and they were just waiting for this to, you know, they, they anticipated this happening, but it’s happened now. And so he meets her at her work and brings her lunch and stuff, and he’s like, we’re having trouble. I really wanna work on it.

You know, I, I love you. I want, you know, I want this to get better. We can be better. I, I think is what he says. Mm-hmm. And he says, I have to go, you know, up to Oregon and, and sort out my dad’s things. Let’s all go together and just spend family time together. And she’s reluctant about taking off work and stuff, but you can see that there is affection and tenderness between them two.

And so ultimately she decides to go and they all go and then they drive to the Shining. 

Todd: That’s right 

Craig: up 

Todd: to the overlook, the under look, maybe we can call it. There’s one thing you did neglect to mention, but it’s really important to point out early on, is that when he said his job is to keep her safe, because what’s my job?

Clip: To keep her daughter safe? 

Todd: Yeah, that’s right. And what’s your job 

Clip: to read minds? 

Todd: Can you guess what I’m thinking right now? 

Clip: I love my little girl. 

Todd: That’s amazing. That’s exactly what I was thinking. How do you do that every time you’re so good at your job? I am gonna use this on my son. It’s adorable. I’m gonna use this on my son.

A hundred percent. We’re about to do like a he, well, he’s about to spend the whole summer with me and I can see where this would be valuable. 

Craig: It’s real. I mean, it’s really sweet. Even just in the moments, ’cause there are these moments kind of throughout and mm-hmm. As things evolve, they become a little bit more bittersweet.

But it’s such a sweet notion that he is basically letting her know that in every given moment he’s thinking about how much he loves her and Yeah. That’s so that’s really sweet. Yeah. You should totally use it. I am. I am 

Todd: stealing this for sure. Yeah. It is hard. You know what? I’ll just say it is sometimes very hard to communicate with your kids.

I bet. Not that you can’t. Find the right words to say, but it’s just really hard to know if they get it. They’re just at a certain age and at every step of the way you think they got it. They think they got it, but then later you realize, oh no, they didn’t really understand that thing that we both thought.

Yeah, they understood. And so it’s a constant challenge. I’m constantly looking for things like this to uh, you know, to better communicate with my son and I’m totally gonna use it. 

Craig: I think it’s easy to forget as adults how scary and confusing and frustrating. Life can be. Yeah. You know, as an adult we, we as an adult, we have tools at our disposal, but you know, kids are experiencing new things all the time.

And that can be scary and it can be frustrating if you don’t understand things like, you don’t understand why your dad’s being such a dick about, you know, walking on the, it’s like a balance being type thing next to the street. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: So they’re traveling back to his family home and it is beautiful.

They’re driving through the mountains and through the forest and we’re following them from above and it’s great. And the mom, what she. Is insecure about, is not her work, but her bond with the daughter. She sees how close her husband and her daughter are, and she’s, she doesn’t say this, but for lack of a better word, she’s envious.

Yeah. She wants that connection too. And so she’s trying to force it. Like the dad starts to tickle the daughter, you know, she’s in the backseat, he’s driving, he reaches back and tickles and the mom kind of tries to join into, and I think the daughter feels like it’s kind of forced. They do a good job.

This whole movie, this whole movie is really well acted and you know that I’m typically not a huge fan of. Kid actors. This girl, uh, Matilda Firth. She’s fantastic, I think. Yeah. I thought she’s fine. I thought she was great. It was not like she has a ton to do, but I believed her all the time. 

Todd: Yeah. I didn’t believe these were not real people.

She didn’t feel like she was acting. 

Craig: No. They felt like real people and I felt genuine connection. I felt, I felt like the husband and wife. There were such intimate moments of connection. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And not just connection, but nonverbal communication. Ah, yeah. That was so subtle, but so. Also easy to read. You could see the conversations that they were having.

They didn’t have to say anything out loud. That’s true. And part of that is because later he has a problem communicating and, and I, I really felt genuine connection between the dad and the daughter. Like their relationship just felt. So, it just seemed like there was so much love there. And, and so if I hadn’t felt that, I don’t think the movie would’ve been effective for me at all.

Because you have to be rooting for this family. Yeah. Percent. Otherwise, there’s nothing else going on. It’s just them anyway, they get there that he pulls up to what he thinks is his dad’s driveway, but they’re, they’re confused. They don’t know where they are. And, and Ginger looks over. Outside the side and says there’s somebody in that tree house Again, it’s a dear blind, but she doesn’t have that context.

And they look over and in fact there is a silhouette there and it starts to come down. And it turns out it’s the kid, I believe, of the guy that the dad called on the short wave radio. Yeah. His name’s Derek. And the guy he called was Dan, I think. Yeah. And he remembers Blake. Mm-hmm. And he says, this isn’t your driveway, it’s mine, but I can take you to yours.

Now Charlotte, the wife is really concerned ’cause she’s a city girl, it seems, and you know, this guy is definitely giving kind of scary back woods a little bit if you chose to read it that way. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Really. I mean it, it could be totally innocent too, but I think the movie’s kind of toying with us a little bit here.

Yeah. They want him to come across as a little bit threatening. It’s a misdirect. But he 

Todd: actually has some great lines. He does. I really like this bit and I think it was really important. It was really smart to put these lines in here. He says some stuff to them about how, you know, this is dangerous to be ride driving around, especially when night falls.

And I don’t think it’s just about. This monster either. It’s really about just being in a car out in the middle of nowhere in the woods. You know, you break down, you run outta gas, you, something happens, like you’re stuck and there’s nothing, nowhere, no one’s gonna help you. It’s just a different sensibility that you have to have when you live in a place like this that obviously they don’t have, or the, at least the mom doesn’t, the daughter doesn’t.

Blake’s probably lost quite a bit of it. You just don’t have to think about these very basic life things. And he’s impressing this point and the mom says, 

Clip: well, we’re, we’re pretty tough. People

says, so

to me, you don’t seem so tough.

That’s a good thing. It means you got a good life, you’re healthy, safe. 

Todd: But you know, this is. Really setting us up. It’s a strong bit of foreshadowing when Blake and Derek talk about being tough, and when these two talk about being tough, they’re talking about completely different things. Being tough isn’t just about a mindset.

It’s about having to like, have real courage and do very difficult things. It’s like straw dogs, it’s like deliverance or anything like that. You know, the, these are city people who are used to city problems, and when they talk about being tough in the face of adversity, what they’re about to face is not the kind of adversity they’re talking about.

You know? And Derek is foreshadowing that, and I think it’s very important to point that out. 

Craig: Yeah, I think that the movie has something to say about that. I, I, I really liked that line. And, you know, again, they’re, they’re trying to make him seem kind of threatening, like, yeah, you don’t look very tough to me, but then the line delivery of the next line, and that’s a good thing.

And he explains why comes across as very sincere and the very next thing that he says. To Blake is, do you thank yourself every day for having such a beautiful family? And again, that could come across threatening in a different movie. And Blake says, yeah, I do. And I feel like it’s it. That exact moment that Ginger screams Daddy, there’s something in the road.

It, again, it looks like a man mostly, but maybe an animal. ’cause it looks kind of hairy. Like again, it’s so quick, you can’t really tell. But it causes Blake to swerve this huge moving truck off the road, which I understand the, I understand the instinct and the impulse, but if you are driving in the mountains just with your family, just hit that guy.

He shouldn’t be in the middle of the street. Anyway, 

Todd: uh, this is such a classic setup and I was a little disappointed at this cliche, once again, how many horror movies have we started where somebody’s driving down a dark road, suddenly there’s something in the middle of the road. The person panics and they instantly incapacitate their car.

Craig: That’s okay. In the middle of nowhere, right? Yeah. And, and this, this is great. Like they Jurassic Park this stuff and have the truck like land sideways. There’s a couple of Jurassic Park moments in this movie. You’re right. Actually this one. Okay. So, so the truck, it’s a big moving truck. It’s like a U-Haul.

Yeah. It lands on its side in a tree, like suspended in the branches, probably, I would guess. Uh, 15, 20 feet off the ground. And the backwoods guy, it’s not nice to call him that. He’s just a country person. 

Todd: Yeah. Nothing 

Craig: wrong with him, but anyway, yeah, he falls out. And is laying on the ground. And when Blake, like he’s dazed for a minute, but when he comes to, and there’s great camera work here too, because it starts on him like as though we were just looking at him in a car.

Normally when he comes around and realizes that he’s sideways, there’s a wonky part in the score and the camera kind of twists. So it disorients us in the same way that he’s disoriented. Mm-hmm. There’s lots of such cool camera work in this. Oh, there really is. I made Alan watch it with me tonight and he didn’t like it, but there were some of the camera effects that he thought were really cool, but we’ll get to those in a second.

Anyway, Derek gets dragged away by something, some kind of. Harry something. Mm-hmm. And so Blake has seen this and he’s, he, he starts to tell his, you know, crawl out the window, crawl up on top of the truck, and they start to, and then I think he sees something in like the side view. It looks like it’s approaching or whatever.

Mm-hmm. Eventually they get out, they jump down off, they take off running. Fortunately, they were very close to the house. Something is obviously chasing them. They just make it inside. Whatever it is, it’s chasing them pounds at the door for a while. But, and again, I could nitpick this, I’m more into this movie for the relationship stuff and the atmosphere stuff.

If you wanna get down to the nitty gritty, like really criticizing it, like they basically get in the house and then they’re fine. Yeah. For a while until they’re not anymore. Uhhuh, this movie is called Wolfman, so we don’t have to try to pretend like it’s not a werewolf movie. It’s okay. Yeah. This werewolf thing, whatever it is, it just kind of comes and goes.

Yeah. At its whim. For a while. 

Todd: It really does. It’s one of those convenient things where when the movie wants to slow it down, that suddenly the werewolf’s not there. And then when the movie’s ready for some action, the werewolf is suddenly a threat. And I mean, if these people were as smart as your typical zombie movie people are, the first thing they would start doing is boarding up the, the walls and the, the doors and the windows.

And they don’t really make this attempt to do it until then. There’s one point where he drags a big piece of furniture to the door. But it, it just all feels a little half-assed to me. For a guy who is so intent on protecting his family, he sure hasn’t seen enough horror movies to know how to do it.

Right. And this guy can just crash through the 

Craig: window at, at any point, right? I mean, the windows at least, I mean, they don’t know what they’re dealing with, but presumably at this point, they. Think it’s an animal. Yeah. But anyway, he, he gets the generator going that we already talked about. Everything lights up.

And then here is a series of events where, you know, they, they find the radio, they start trying to call, that’s fine. But then the wife notices that his arm is bleeding and they pull up his sleeve and he’s got a big nasty cut. And he says, oh, I must have cut it on the window when it shattered. And she says, this doesn’t look like a glass cut to me.

And she pours hydrogen peroxide on it and bandages it up. Now the movie, you know, I read the IMDB trivia and the, they, the filmmakers talk about how they wanted this transformation to be a more gradual transformation than is typical in these movies. Mm-hmm. And it is, yeah. But it still happens over the course of just a couple hours.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: One night at least. 

Todd: Well, it’s still faster. Yeah. It’s 

Craig: really 

Todd: not all that gradual, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, when you consider, when you compare it to American Werewolf in London. There’s a much longer where it’s minutes. Yeah. Well it is minutes in its final transformation, but honestly, like he’s having symptoms and issues for days.

Right. So it is a That’s true. That’s, it is a little longer in that’s, it’s having 

Craig: nightmares and stuff. Well, but it’s also different because in American Werewolf and London, and most of these movies, you know, there’s usually kind of maybe the full moon thing. Like you only actually turn into a wolf when you’re That’s true.

In the full moon, or, or you only turn into a wolf at night or something along those lines. Lee Weell and his wife had a friend who was diagnosed with a LS Luke E’s disease, which is a terrible disease. Alan lost an uncle, a beloved uncle, to a LSA couple of years ago, and he was a great guy. I had the, the pleasure of meeting him and he was wonderful, and his family just speaks of him so highly.

And a LS is a terrible disease because it’s degenerative. Physically, and you know, you’re, you’re all there mentally, so you just have to kind of watch yourself deteriorate and, and watch your body fail you. And it’s, it’s horrible. They wanted this movie to be more of a reflection of that. Yeah. And it’s also, it’s, it’s not only awful for the person who’s suffering from it, but their family suffers.

You know, they have to watch their loved one waste away in front of their eyes and, and lose the ability to care for themselves and do the things that they once did and loved. And it’s just awful. And I think that that’s what he’s going for. So this transformation feels more like that. And it also feels like we don’t know the rules.

This isn’t a standard werewolf movie. Right. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the moon. You know, it doesn’t seem like this is a temporary transformation. And then like most of the time in these types of movies, when. The person who is a lichen trope is in their wolf state. When they come back to their human state, often they have no memory of what they did while they were a wolf.

Right. It’s almost like it’s two separate entities. It’s just taking over at different times. And in this case it seems more gradual and it seems that it’s a gradual progression towards something permanent. Yes, 

Todd: you’re right. It’s like the fly. Mm-hmm. A lot. I was getting strong fly vibes when I was watching it.

And also, God, I was thinking clown as the movie went on, it was reminding me of clown. Do you remember that one where he puts on the clown outfit? Yeah. And, and that. That movie was far more tragic and really hit me harder than than I thought it would at its core. It’s really, really sad. Very sad. And the fly is for sure.

It’s a tragedy. Yeah, it’s a tragedy about the same thing. It’s like old age. It’s about. Terminal illness, whatever you want it to be. This is a horror that is all the more real, because it actually happens to people. Mm-hmm. And many of us have experience with this. It really hurts. And then clown for me was, was this the sense of this guy who really didn’t do anything wrong?

Which is again, illness is like that too. No, he was trying to do something nice for his kid. Yeah. He was actually trying to do something nice for his kid and he just got in this situation, you know, he didn’t deserve that much. Like none of us deserve these kind of things to happen to us. Terrible things.

Craig: Right, exactly. And nobody deserves. 

Todd: And the same thing with this guy. Obviously he didn’t deserve this, he didn’t do anything wrong. And it’s an ironic twist of fate that this guy who has seen himself so rigorously as the protector over his family is now becoming the threat. To his family. And I think those are really interesting themes to explore emotionally.

You know, between both of them it 

Craig: is, I’m gonna kind of gloss over. So the point is he begins to transform. It’s very gradual, but here are some of the things that happens. His senses start to become enhanced. He smells things that other people can’t smell. He hears things very, like he hears a very loud noise in the house.

Again, it’s a misdirect. You think that the werewolf has gotten into the house somehow, but the wife and the daughter are both asleep and they don’t hear it. He goes upstairs to investigate and in fact, it’s just a spider. I mean, it’s a big spider, but crawling along the wall. Now here’s where I get to the complaint about sound.

Yeah. It doesn’t, this isn’t consistent. If his hearing is that enhanced, that alone should drive him insane. Yeah, because while he’s hearing. This clunk, clunk, clunk of this spider walking along the wall. We are also hearing the noises of nature outside, crickets, all kinds of things. And that kind of incessant noise almost drives me crazy.

At a normal level. If my hearing were enhanced tenfold or more, it would drive you absolutely insane and you wouldn’t be able, I don’t think, I don’t know. I’ve never been a werewolf. But you wouldn’t be able to differentiate. It would just be a cacophony of noise. Yeah. 

Todd: And then every time your kids are talking to you in a normal tone, it would sound like screaming.

You know? I mean, it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. And you’d think with this super power, I get it. I understand 

Craig: what they’re going for. Yeah. But it’s just, you know, it’s true. I mean, I, I guess that dogs don’t go crazy and, and that’s what they were going for. He was trying to like. What would a, if a, if a, a man were turning into some sort of canine hybrid, how would that change their senses?

And dogs do have heightened, you know, greater hearing capacity than rehab. Yeah, true. They do have, you know, a, a greater sense of smell than we have. So maybe I’m over, I get what he’s going for. And for me it works because the first time I watched it, I didn’t think twice when he said, what’s that smell? I just thought there was rotting meat.

And he smelled it. And the second time I watched it, I’m like, oh yeah, his, his smell is enhancing smell right. Then the sound and then his teeth start to fall out. And then subtle changes in his appearance. Like his, his jaw is starting to swell a little bit, which could be explained by the accident if he hit his head or something.

But when it gets really cool, it’s right after he sees the spider, he comes downstairs and he hears something else strange. It sounds like a radio. That there’s interference or something, not, not static, but like the mm-hmm. You can’t make out what the person is saying. And as he walks down the stairs, we realize that it’s his wife on the radio and she’s desperately calling out.

Clip: This is Charlotte Bubble. If someone can hear me, please respond. My, my husband is, uh, sick. Um, I, I, if anyone can and can hear me, uh, please, please call someone to help. We were attacked by. Some kind of animal. And I, I think my, um, husband was infected by it. He’s, he is not himself and, um, he can’t, he can’t talk.

Um, yeah, he does. He doesn’t seem to know he is sick. But, um, if, if someone can hear what I’m saying, please help. 

Craig: But when we see it more from his perspective, it’s as though she’s talking in gibberish. Yeah. He can’t understand anything she’s saying. This is a nice bit. It’s a really good bit. And it eventually leads to that camera stuff that Alan was so impressed by and that I said, I’m going to have to ask Todd to explain this to me.

Todd: Oh, what you mean, how they did it? I mean, yeah. It’s obviously computer effects laid over well, 

Craig: that’s. I am sure there’s some CGI, but one of the things that we haven’t discussed, which is one of the things that I love most about this movie is that they wanted to do it as practically as possible. Yeah. And so most of the effects, the makeup effects, the physical transformation effects are almost exclusively now, of course, this is modern.

So, you know, in editing and in touching up, of course they add some touching up CGI, which is great. And that’s fine. You know, I appreciate the effort at Practical Effects and it looks great. But what he said when you read the trivia is he said that a lot of these effects were achieved in camera. Yeah. The effect is that when you’re looking.

From the wife’s perspective, you see him and he, you know, his face is starting to change. He’s starting to kind of grow hair. He’s kind of getting kinda like slimy and weird. His eyes are changing a little bit, but she’s talking and you can understand her and everything looks normal. Then the camera swings around as though it passes through an invisible barrier, 180 degrees.

So it’s looking from his perspective, and as it swings, it gradually changes. The light becomes, I don’t know how tos glowy explain it. 

Todd: Everything’s right. It’s, they’re, they’re shadowy, but they’re kind of glowy now. It almost like you can see their veins, but they’re like glowing 

Craig: and 

Todd: their 

Craig: eyes are kind of glowing and their face is kind of iridescent and everything is kind of in.

I saw somebody describe it as more heat. Yeah, like that heat sensor, like the predator kind of mm-hmm. It’s a little bit like predator vision. Yeah. It’s not all red like a machine, but it does seem like it’s picking up temperature as opposed to just visual. And as it swings around, her voice becomes jumbled.

So what he’s doing is he’s showing us that Blake. His perception is changing. Yeah. He can’t understand them. He can’t talk. He’s seeing them in a different way. It’s all changing and it’s very cool, and I don’t understand how they would do that in camera. I don’t even know what that means. No, 

Todd: I, I mean, what they were saying was that they did some of the lighting in camera, so when it swings around from him to them, you know, it does get darker.

Right Uhhuh in addition to this glowing stuff. So they were actually dimming lights and bringing them back up when they swung it back around and things like that. But then all of those extra details, like the glowing eyes and the veins and there’s like some kind of swirliness in the air and things like that.

I mean, those were obviously laid on later as CGI, but uh Okay. But yeah, they didn’t just a hundred percent CGI it, you know, they did. And there are also some interesting light effects earlier too, where his background dims and things like that without any of this crazy purple and stuff in it that they achieved in camera.

So I don’t think they were talking about like absolutely everything, but they were talking about, you know, elements of that were done practically. And you know, it probably helps the actor too, you know, to get in that frame of mind. I like this. I’m not sure we did a whole werewolf month and I know that, you know, some of those films in one way or another address the idea that these.

You know, through the eyes of these people, they’re getting these different abilities or these heightened senses. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a werewolf movie where it was done to this degree before and this, I really like it, this kind of holistically. And I, I liked it 

Craig: too. I thought that really set this apart.

Wolfen was kind of like it. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: I would say Wolfen is probably the closest ’cause they saw in a different kind of way. 

Todd: That’s true. 

Craig: But, so this is all happening. And it’s also heartbreaking because she’s trying to talk to him. Now, I’m probably gonna conflate a couple of scenes, but there’s one scene where he’s lying down and she’s talking to him and she’s saying all of these things.

I love you, you’re my best friend. I, I never wanna go through life without you. And these are the things that they had been struggling with. You know, they had had this tension. And obviously in this moment of. Tragedy. She means it, she does love him. And she, it swings back around to his perspective and he can’t understand what she’s saying.

Yeah, it’s heartbreaking. Really heartbreaking. And it’s also hard, like she, because he can’t talk, she brings him a pad of paper and she says, can you write it down? And he writes down in a scrawled hand dying. And she says, no, no, no. You’re just sick. We’re gonna get you help. You’re gonna be okay. And again, he can’t understand anything.

There are are moments where the daughter talks to him and she puts her hand on his head and says, I know that you’re thinking that you love me. And you know what, again, he can’t understand, but he, but he’s seeing them. It’s obvious that he doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. But it’s obvious that he’s also still 

Todd: him.

Yeah, he’s slipping away, but he’s still him. Now, here’s where the movie for me didn’t. I look, I, I’m just gonna say that this movie didn’t hit me at the emotional level that the fly and clown did. That’s fair. And I was trying to figure out why, because it should, and I know it’s aiming for that. I cry, watching the fly, I cry thinking about the fly.

That’s really sad. That movie is super sad. The clown clown movie really bothered me. This one, I was even trying to conjure those feelings. And on an intellectual level, I was like, yeah, this is horrible. This is really sad story. What? Look at what these people are going through, but didn’t draw those emotions out of me.

And I still not exactly sure why, because it, it had all the elements. I think it kind of came down to the performances. And maybe there are two things that I can think about. Number one is this family is. Super stoic in the face of all this. They are resilient. The mother stares him down multiple times.

There are times when he is lunging and lurching at them. Looks like he’s gonna kill his own family. And the mom will just stand there, steely-eyed and look at him. Now she’s, I read 

Craig: that scene entirely different. Entirely different. I didn’t see her as staring him down steely-eyed at all, and, and we’re jumping way ahead.

A lot happens and we’ll go back, but this moment is important because it’s wind. He’s just done something very violent to protect them, but it’s clearly unlocked more of his animalistic nature and he’s still kind of riled up and he jumps over a table and gets right in her face. Snarling. Yeah. But I didn’t see it at all as her returning a glare.

A steely glare. I thought it was communicating. I know you won’t hurt me. I thought that that’s at what calmed him down because he doesn’t hurt 

Todd: her. Uh, maybe I chose the wrong word here because, ’cause I’m not saying that it was all that, right. I, I think it was a mixture of emotions. But I, what I’m trying to say is she’s remarkably calm in the face of almost getting attacked by her husband.

I understand it’s her husband, but I do feel like there is even just these emotions of protecting my daughter, she’s taken a huge risk here that I’m just not convinced she would take. Maybe she felt she had no choice, but it just, ugh. I, I, I, it just didn’t, I understand. Ah. 

Craig: I understand what you’re saying and I understand why.

It could be hard to believe. And I questioned her choices at times too. But ultimately I understood why she made the choices that she did. There’s one point after he can’t understand them, obviously things are not going well, and there’s a moment where he can’t talk, but he walks up out of the basement and he walks to the door and it’s, and he’s looking at the door.

This is one of those moments where I thought that they had conversations without any words. He stands looking at the door, she’s standing right behind him. It seems to me that both of them are thinking he may need to leave. Mm. I thought that they were both thinking that. Mm. And then he turned around and looked at her and he was still kind of panting a little bit, but in looking at her, he kind of calmed down and kind of exhaled a little bit.

Yeah. And looked at her very pleadingly. Yeah. And she just looked at him and turned her back to him. And walked back into the house, and I read that as an invitation. You can stay. Yeah. And I don’t know Todd, I don’t, I don’t know. Maybe that wasn’t a wise decision. It probably would’ve been smarter if they were really making the decision for their daughter.

They should have locked him out. But putting myself in that position, I don’t know what I would do. 

Todd: Well, I don’t know what I would do either, but I mean, watching the movie happen in front of me, I feel like this woman somewhere in her mind. Had a bit of a death wish. You know, like, well, God, if he’s gonna go out, I’m just gonna go out with him.

That is the only way I could explain some of the choices that she makes, and I don’t think the movie was really trying for that, but that was how I felt. And also, let me just talk about the daughter for a second. She was, look, you can just say, well, these are just how these characters are. They’re more stoic, they’re more resilient, they’re more whatever.

Okay, that’s fine. But then because of that, it just didn’t hit me as hard. The daughter has a heartbreaking moment where she’s running away, and I can’t remember when or where it happens, but she says, daddy, you’re scaring me. And I, I was like, oh my God. Like, that is horrible 

Craig: to hear that from your kid. The only things that we skipped, I will go back to them.

I, gosh, I, I’m not trying to be contrary, I just totally disagree. I saw this as three people who were desperately, desperately trying to cling. To hope and to clinging to their family. I understand what you’re saying. This girl, from an outsider’s perspective seems shocking. Like she’s scared. She’s definitely scared, but I can understand why one might think that she would be more scared, especially as a child.

The reason that I didn’t think that was because no matter what, that’s her dad, you know? Like yes. But, and, and, and what the mom keeps saying, nobody ever says werewolf in this movie. What the mom keeps saying is, daddy is sick. Yeah. And. If your dad is, when people get sick, they change, they, their physical appearance of change, often their behavior changes.

It’s still your dad. You know, I can understand. I don’t know. I just, I don’t know. I get it. No, I get it. And, and I’m, Alan didn’t like the movie either, so I’m not even suggesting I’m right. And you’re, I’m not saying I didn’t like it. You’re right. The reviews are very, very mixed. I’ve, 

Todd: I don’t know. It just, it hit, it hit for me.

Please don’t paint me as not liking this movie. I like the movie. I’m just explaining why emotionally this part of it didn’t hit me the same and didn’t hit me as I expected. And I think maybe didn’t hit me like the filmmakers wanted it to hit me. Look, I, I get it and I agree with you. I think that’s exactly what they were going for and Sure.

Look, I’ve had sick relatives and we’ve had to have my son visit my grandfather who was dying, Bicks mother who wasted away, and we didn’t shield him from any of that. We wanted him to face it. Even as a, that’s good kid. You know? And we calmly explained these things to him and I think he’s better off for it.

Okay. But he never saw any of them leap up and have a all in out brawl with another similar creature, two or three times and or leap threatening towards him, you know what I mean? After what she has seen go down and after she has seen how dangerous her dad can be and about how her dad clearly is having trouble controlling himself.

I would think that the smarter this girl is and they’re paying her as wise beyond her years, her high EQ that she seems to have, she would just naturally be more scared. There are moments where we are far into the movie and far into his transformation and he seems very, very threatening and she is going up to him and putting her hand on his forehead and doing the, the, you know, the read My Mind trick, which is very, very sweet.

But yeah, come 

Craig: on. I know, and I questioned those moments too, and I think that you’re referring probably to. One of the final moments, and, and I agree with you. I questioned it too. I, I was logically, it doesn’t make less sense. Just at 

Todd: some point your emotions take over and you’re scared, you know, your dad’s eyes are glowing.

He has fangs, you know, he’s like, he just attacked a guy two or three times and, you know, killed his own. Okay. It ends up being his own father. Big surprise. Right. We, like, we didn’t see that coming. Surprise, 

Craig: Alan, Alan wanted me to tell you that he called it in the first 10 minutes. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a little obvious.

Todd: Yeah. I don’t know if it was even supposed to be a twist, but the movie kind of played it like it was a twist, and so that was a little like, oh, come on, come on, 

Craig: Lee. Yeah. Give us some credit that, that werewolf. Yeah, I know. It CEEs them in the house for a while. It, it gets in at some point through a doggy door for a little bit and, and, and then CEEs them more around the house.

Eventually Charlotte sees that there’s a truck outside. There’s a whole scene where they go out to the truck. It’s very tense, and eventually the werewolf, you know, they get the truck started, but the werewolf shows up and disables the truck and chases them on top of this. Plastic greenhouse. I thought that was a stupid decision too.

But what else were they gonna do? I mean, it was nearby, they were trying to get away. Yeah. There’s another Jurassic Park moment where the werewolf is in the greenhouse jumping up and ripping holes with its claws in the plastic and ginger kind of falls through and has to get pulled up. It’s just like that scene where the girl falls through the ceiling panel and the raptor’s like jumping up at her.

Yeah, and that’s fun. And then the dad, Blake distracts the werewolf. He runs off like he, he can’t talk, but he signals for them to run to the house and he jumps off and runs away. They run back to the house, they get inside, they hear the werewolves fighting outside, but then the fighting stops and they just hear panting outside.

So they let him in again. Again. Yeah, questionable. Come on. But like he’s just standing out there looking at them plaintively, but they let him in again. He’s in there. He throws up, he throws up one of the other werewolf’s fingers. He’s getting scarier and scarier. But then the other werewolf gets in and there’s a big fight there and everybody fights and the mom fights the werewolf and the dad fights the werewolf.

And it ends up with Blake, who’s almost fully wolfed out now, tearing out the other werewolf’s throat and he dies. And that’s when he sees the tattoo on his arm that has his last name. So we know it’s his dad. And Blake knows now. 

Todd: And I was like, come on. I, I think it would’ve been much better if Blake had just put two and two together earlier on.

Like he should have that. Wait a minute, my dad, who’s been missing for years and this creature I know. Like, just, just do that. It would’ve been just fine. We don’t need this fake twist in here. This, I guess, I don’t know. I don’t know that I would immediately, it didn’t matter for Blake either. It didn’t change him.

He’s already 

Craig: changed. 

Todd: This revelation. And he, 

Craig: well, right, and this is, this is the moment, like he’s so worked up from this. I think this is the moment where he lunges at her and it takes her not responding in fear to calm him down. And finally he realizes that he needs to get out of there. Yeah. And he goes out into the moonlight and has a great, oh.

Mostly practical transformation with air bladders and very Rick Baker. Oh, so good. 

Todd: Ugh. I, I, it looks, it’s, it’s great. I, I stood up at that point. I was like, yes. Yeah, it’s really 

Craig: good. Yeah. But now he’s fully wolfed out and he does come back and, you know, he’s chasing them and he chases ’em around the house a little bit and he chases them through the forest.

And now we get back to the bookend. They end up at the same deer blind. That he and his dad were in at the beginning. Yep. And they climb into the deer blind and it’s the exact same scene. They’re sitting up against the back of it. She’s got a gun. She got the gun from the guy whose name I got wrong before Derrick.

Derrick. His body, you know, his body parts are strewn all over, but she finds his gun there. They’re up there and Blake Werewolf is crawling up just like in the beginning. And he scratches and she readies the gun. And then unlike the first time, the werewolf does come up above and Alan laughed. He’s like, this looks so stupid.

What’s his name? The director, Lee Winnel said that he knew. That people would have mixed opinions on the look of the werewolf. You know, they had discussions about how much hair should it have, how much, and it is a different look than your typical werewolf. Alan found his final form to be a, aside from the fact that he was yoked, he liked that, but he found his face to be almost humorous.

I don’t know. Yeah. I liked it. I thought it was, I didn’t have a problem with it. I appreciate a different approach. But anyway, he rises up, Charlotte and Ginger stand up. She’s pointing the gun at him, and I didn’t catch this the first time either, but it’s so sweet. Yes, Blake looks at both of them and he looks at the daughter and she kind of exhales and says.

Mommy, he wants it to be over. Mm-hmm. I didn’t even put two and two together the first time that, that’s her reading his mind again. Like she really can. And that’s what she’s really reading in him, that he’s still in there and he just wants it to be over. So when he does lunge at them, she shoots him and Alan said, oh, he’s not dead.

He’ll be back. But you can’t be right about everything. 

Todd: I, I think this is a poignant, poetic, great ending. It’s still very tragic, 

Craig: but it leads to the moment I think that you were talking about he’s not dead. Yeah. He appears to be mortally injured, but they go and kneel down next to him as he dies. Yeah. I mean that, that, that maybe wait until he dies.

You know? Yeah. It was a little risky. I mean, it was, it was a nice moment. It’s a nice shot, but a little risky maybe. Especially since Charlotte, the wife kneels down by his hips and the daughter kneels right by his head, and like you said, puts his, puts her hand on his head and both, I mean, it’s, we’re supposed to believe that he dies peacefully and everything’s, you know, for 

Todd: the better or whatever.

I think this is why this didn’t hit me so hard, because at the point at which, ’cause I’m standing there, I’m literally thinking in my head, I am intentionally trying to drop these emotions. I’m thinking in my head, I, how horrible that you know, you’re gonna have to shoot your loved one. It’s like putting your dog down.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Right? 

Craig: Yes. Like, 

Todd: how horrible when you know that you’re gonna have to do this, what must be going through their minds right now? And when the daughter says, mommy, he wants it to be over, I’m like, oh. They’ve kind of made peace with it. Yeah. And that’s good. That’s fine. Like that. We could all be that strong and we know she, they have to it work.

Right. 

Craig: And it, it 

Todd: works for 

Craig: the metaphor. Yes. It’s, it works perfectly. Like at, at, at some point she says, why did daddy get sick? I mean, this is earlier in the movie. She says, why did daddy get sick? And she says, the mom says. Daddy’s daddy was sick and I think that he passed it on to Daddy. Yeah, yeah, of course.

It’s, it’s on the nose. Obviously not all illnesses hereditary, but some of it is, it is a little on the nose, but that, I mean, I, that was the specific messaging that they were going for, and as an analogy, it really works for me. It works for me too. I, I 

Todd: think it’s fine, and that’s why I really don’t have a problem with this movie.

That’s why I liked the movie. All I’m explaining is, I think that’s why it hits differently is because in the fly in clown, they don’t make peace with this. Like it’s a tragedy, it’s a horrible thing that happens and everybody feels bad. Sure. And so maybe that is why, you know, it didn’t hit the same.

Whereas by the end of the movie, I feel like, okay, mother and daughter have been preparing for this moment. Moment. They have almost been preparing for this moment since midway through when daughter was, you know, very courageously going to dad and trying to comfort him even though he’s still snarling and scary and weird.

Like she has somehow in her mind, emotionally figured out what’s happening and is no longer as scared as she should be. And so I think all of that kind of dampened for me, the sense of danger. I never, for one moment thought those two were gonna get killed. Never for one moment. No. No, not at all. And some might say, well, in a better movie, you know, they would, there would be that tension.

I’m like, no, it’s just not that kind of movie. I don’t care. You don’t need to try to make this, uh, the movie that you think it should be in order to sound like a really smart critic. Just go with it with what it is. And so I don’t really have a problem with it. I think it works. I think the movie works.

I’ll be on the side of the people who are like, yeah, it was a nice movie. It really was. I think they did some interesting things with it. I liked the transformation scenes. I liked the practical effects. I thought emotionally it, it worked. There were a few unbelievable moments, but I don’t mm-hmm. Expect a movie to be perfect either.

I 

Craig: thought the cinematography was really good. Yeah, it’s well made. I appreciated the acting. I, I, I was, I was down with that family and I think that Lee Winnel is a really talented director. He is. I’ve enjoyed most of his movies that I’ve seen. The only one that I wasn’t a big fan of was that ventriloquist dummy one that wasn’t my favorite.

Dead, uh, silence or whatever. Was that 

Todd: what it 

Craig: was? Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: Didn’t care much for that one. But the other ones I’ve really liked that was him and, um, James Juan together on that one. Right. I think he Gotcha, gotcha. He wrote that. Yeah. 

Craig: Maybe it was, I don’t know. I didn’t look it up. But a lot of the times that we do this, we agree on things, and I actually think that it’s interesting sometimes when we don’t, and I think that in this case, your opinion is more reflective of the general opinion of this movie.

For whatever reason, I really enjoyed it. And so I don’t know if you tend to like the movies I like. Mm, you’ll probably like it.

I don’t know. I think e either way, and I think that you would agree with me. It’s, it’s a well-made movie and it’s, yeah, certainly, certainly far from a waste of time. 

Todd: Oh, I liked it. I mean, I liked the movie. I, I walked away feeling good about it. Like I said, it just didn’t hit me emotionally like I, like I think it was going for, or like I’ve been hit with these kind of movies in the past, but gosh, especially after doing our werewolf month, you know, this is right up there.

If this had come out, you know, when we were doing that month, we would be, that would’ve been in the mix and it probably would’ve been one of our favorites, I think. I think so too. Well, thank you so much for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend. You can find us online.

Just Google two guys in chainsaw podcast. Chainsaw ho.com is our website. patreon.com/chainsaw podcast is our Patreon for just five bucks a month, you can join and get complete unedited episodes that we put out, a lots of little here and there conversation that we have behind the scenes with our listeners.

They get to vote on our requests that we do on the show. We have Mini sos. We have a book club up there. Lots of fun back behind the scenes. Please check it out at patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.