Overview: From Blumhouse and visionary writer-director Leigh Whannell, the creators of the chilling modern monster tale The Invisible Man, comes a terrifying new lupine nightmare: Wolf Man. Golden Globe nominee Christopher Abbott (Poor Things, It Comes at Night) stars as Blake, a San Francisco husband and father, who inherits his remote childhood home in rural Oregon after his own father vanishes and is presumed dead.

With his marriage to his high-powered wife, Charlotte (Emmy winner Julia Garner; Ozark, Inventing Anna), fraying, Blake persuades Charlotte to take a break from the city and visit the property with their young daughter, Ginger (Matlida Firth; Hullraisers, Coma).

Verdict: Odds were good that Leigh Whannell would eventually make a bad movie, but after the horror reboot skills he displayed in The Invisible Man, it didn’t seem like Wolf Man would be his first significant misstep.

Heck, for the first 40some minutes of this Universal Monsters update, practically all signs point to another success.

Featuring gorgeous natural scenery in remote Oregon and transfixing sound design, the introductory 1995 chapter shows Whannell’s gifts with supernatural tension in full effect. As Marine-turned-prepper Grady Lovell (Sam Jaeger, Parenthood) and his son Blake (Zac Chandler) encounter a mysterious creature while out in the woods, terror runs high and visible breath outside a hunting blind expertly conveys an unseen threat.

Suspense remains high as the actions shifts 30 years forward to adult Blake (Christopher Abbott, Poor Things) living in San Francisco with his workaholic journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner, Ozark) and their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth, Disenchanted). Though few insights are offered, it’s clear that their marriage has fractured, and when the long-missing Grady is declared dead and the opportunity arises to spend quality time together at Blake’s childhood home, the family heads north.

Once there, a well-staged, unsettling ride with Grady’s survivalist neighbor Derek (Benedict Hardie, The Invisible Man) goes horribly wrong, forcing the Lovells to scramble for their lives and seek refuge in the house. Inside, it becomes evident that Blake’s wound from the incident has some unusual side effects, yet while the transformation into the titular beast would seemingly herald the film’s most terrifying moments, it instead ushers in a shockingly rapid descent towards ineptitude.

In addition to forgetting how to light a scene, Whannell and his wife/co-writer Corbett Tuck forego their firm grip on the narrative in favor of an arduous chronicling of Blake’s gradual change. Though this overlong stretch includes some creative representations of his suddenly enhanced senses, they’re undermined by puzzling character decisions that stem from Charlotte and Ginger somehow not grasping the severity of Blake’s condition.