“Wolf Man” director opens up about the personal story guiding the film and that end-credits tribute

When writing a horror movie, Leigh Whannell asks himself, "What scares me at my core? What are my existential fears?" For Wolf Man, which the Invisible Man and Insidious director wrote with his wife, Corbett Tuck, the answer became disease.

Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner star as Blake and Charlotte, a San Francisco couple with a strained marriage. When Blake inherits his childhood farmhouse in rural Oregon after his missing father is legally declared dead, he sees a getaway as an opportunity to strengthen his family, which includes their young daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). But almost immediately upon arrival, a ferocious creature attacks them, forcing the family to barricade themselves inside the cabin. Once inside, Charlotte and Ginger watch helplessly as Blake's injuries transform him into something unrecognizable.

Whannell and Tuck worked on the film amid COVID-19 lockdowns during the height of the 2020 pandemic. So, the ideas of infection and sheltering in place from an unstoppable, some might say monstrous, entity were already top of mind. The concept, however, deepened and really found its emotional core when the conversation turned toward an equally nefarious, much more familial kind of illness.

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"This idea of seeing the world from the Wolf Man's perspective and him not being able to communicate with his family seemed like such rich, potent material — disease and illness, these things that rob you from your family," Whannell tells Entertainment Weekly. "Corbett and I had personal experience with a friend of ours and watching how these diseases can disintegrate a family. There's no rhyme or reason, the cruelty of nature to select certain people and put their families through this trauma. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, whatever these things are, you're supposed to put up a brave front, but there is that cruelty."

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The film now holds even more personal significance for both Whannell and Tuck, who endured a tragic experience a few months before Wolf Man started filming in New Zealand in 2024. Those who stick around through the movie's end credits will notice a tribute to Chandler Tuck, the screenwriter's late brother and Whannell's late brother-in-law. Chandler died at 44 on Dec. 22, 2023, of suicide, Whannell divulges. "It wasn't as if the film was written about him, but it was such a blast wave of shock," he says. "It's a hand grenade, a loss like that. It just leaves so many unanswered questions. I think he was with me while I was making the film, that there was this very raw attachment to grief."

Whannell hadn't had a comparable experience of "living something while making it." He expounds upon the idea, noting how there usually is some distance from an event like that. "You'll have a tragedy, and then the filmmaker will come away and write about it and then maybe make a film," he says. "It's rare that you see a filmmaker writing about the thing while they're in the thing." Whannell believes it impacted the making of the movie. He says he didn't direct his actors "from a clinical distance." Rather, "I felt like I was as raw and as emotional as they were," he continues. "I had [Chandler] in mind the whole time. I think the film ended up being cathartic for me in terms of grieving in those scenes."

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Both Abbott and Garner remember speaking with the filmmakers about Chandler and the emotional truth of Wolf Man. "I attached myself [to the film] before that thing happened," Garner remarks. "But that was definitely a discussion and just loss in general."

"Leigh and Corbett put so much of their heart into the script and...how do you make a genre film and still make it personal?" Abbott comments. "And always trying to inject something of the human experience into this heightened world. Leigh and I would talk about all those themes while still trying to scare people: the theme of generational trauma, the idea of communication, when the ability to communicate is taken from you, and you can't communicate with your loved ones anymore, and trying to be a better parent to a child than your parent was to you. There are all these things that you can inject into what is essentially a fun ride of a movie."

Wolf Man is now playing in theaters.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly