Within the First Epistle to the Corinthians are a handful of phrases bound to send chills up anyone’s spine, regardless of their religious affiliation. For instance, Christ’s apostle Paul declares, “I wanna hide the truth/I wanna shelter you/But with the beast inside/There’s nowhere we can hide.” Later, he further opines, “They say it’s what you make/I say it’s up to fate/It’s woven in my soul/I need to let you go.” Such arcane declarations reflect how the duality of humanity has always been a fixture of art. The tug-of-war between the good and bad humans are capable remains eternally on our minds.

Maybe that’s why the original Universal Monsters Wolfman is so enduringly popular. That and the incredible makeup work done to transform Lon Chaney Jr. into that hairy beast, of course. Inevitably, this creature has received a 2020s update since Universal refuses to let its creepy-crawlies from the 1930s/40s lay dormant for long. Following the likes of The Invisible Man and Renfield, this creature receives a 2020 update, arriving as a vintage brute into the modern-day world in Wolf Man. Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell takes charge of this reboot, one that will prove frustratingly familiar for monster movie fans.

Wolf Man begins in 1995, with a young Blake awakened by his uber-strict father on their remote Oregon father. Theirs is a household where parents grip their kids by the arm if they misbehave, and something is always lurking in the woods waiting to kill them. After this glimpse into yesteryear, Whannell and Corbett Tuck’s script cuts to the modern world. Blake (Christopher Abbott), now a writer turned stay-at-home dad living in New York City, is married to journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and caring for their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth).

In the seven years since Whannell’s 2018 delight Upgrade, he’s only helmed one other movie (Invisible Man). The gap makes it easy to forget how he struggles to write believable dialogue. However, Wolf Man doesn’t take long to remind audiences of this shortcoming thanks to a barrage of tin-eared expository lines. The moment Blake learns of his father’s passing, for instance, he mechanically says things like “I ran away from home when I was young” or “Now I wish I had spent more time with him” in the flattest medium shots.

The demise of Dad means Blake and his family must travel to that fateful isolated Oregon farmyard. On the way, a beast that Blake swears “stood up on two legs…like a man” attacks the group. Ginger and Charlotte escape without physical scars, but Blake isn’t so lucky. What follows is a gradual transformation more akin to The Fly than the more typical werewolf metamorphosis. Instead of assuming the form of the supernatural beasty in a single sequence, Blake physically changes piecemeal style, losing more of his humanity with each step.

The early sequences showing Blake’s slow transformation into something else are Wolf Man’s greatest strengths. A terrific set piece creatively spotlights Blake grappling with his newfound enhanced hearing with the film’s liveliest burst of cinematography. The camera mimics the positions of Blake’s contorted and disoriented body, tilted angles consuming the screen. It’s a brief glimpse of the kind of vivid photography Whannell and cinematographer Stefan Duscio used so smartly in Upgrade. Elsewhere, the nastiest digressions prove the most entertaining, if only in an “aw, gross!” fashion. A still-mostly human Blake gnawing on some exposed flesh in front of his wife is especially memorable, for instance.

Unfortunately, Wolf Man misfires as both slow-burn horror and tragic parable. Endless sequences of silence in anticipation of snarls or bared claws get old quickly. Meanwhile, the intended emotional devastation of watching this family crumble in the face of Blake’s transformation rings hollow. They each clinically restate the film’s thematic thesis to one another so often they don’t register as worth getting invested in.

Most frustratingly, the wolfman-centric parts of Wolf Man are a bust, including the beast’s “grounded” design. For prolonged stretches, Christopher Abbott looks far more like a slightly toothy guy cosplaying Peter Sarsgaard’s Hector Hammond than Lon Chaney Jr’s iconic beast. Even the final form gives off some major CW vibes. Whannell and Tuck’s writing also leans too heavily on The Fly in guiding Blake’s gradual descent into beastliness. I lost count of how many times I thought, “Why am I not just watching a Cronenberg movie?” during my screening.

Strangely, the duo’s script also heavily evokes 2010’s The Wolfman. Fractured father/son dynamics are part and parcel of the Universal Wolfman mythos dating back to the original 1941 movie. However, Wolf Man’s exploration of this concept puzzlingly treads much familiar ground from that Joe Johnston directorial effort. Between harkening back to that other Wolfman remake, reusing so much of The Fly, and setting this story seemingly in the same farmhouse from X, Wolf Man is too reminiscent of horror cinema’s past.

It’s cool, at least, to see Christopher Abbott headlining a major studio release. However, much like Rachel Sennott getting under-served in Saturday Night, Wolf Man reflects that indie actors receiving mainstream cinema roles can be as much a curse as it is a blessing. In past efforts like On the Count of Three or James White, Abbott conveyed so many complicated emotions just by how he sang Papa Roach or moved his eyes. Under Whannell’s direction, though, Abbott’s stuck keeping his head tilted downward as he recites the flat and fumbling dialogue. Between this and Kraven the Hunter, Abbott might want to stick to indie films where his many talents can flourish.

Who could blame him for taking on this role, though? The Wolfman is a famous horror beastie for a reason. Man’s darkest impulses have always compelled artists. Unfortunately, the ingenuity Whannell brought to Invisible Man has flown the coop here. This mostly listless retread of superior horror cinema only fleetingly delivers entertainingly violent chaos. To paraphrase that Corinthians passage, “Don’t get too close/it’s dark inside/It’s where the underwhelming Wolf Man hides.” Man! There really is a Bible verse for everything!

Wolf Man stalks under the cinema’s full moon starting January 17.

Wolf Man Trailer: