One of January’s most eagerly anticipated movies is Wolf Man, a contemporary retelling of the classic werewolf story directed by Leigh Whannell and produced by Blumhouse. In this version, the titular lycan is family man Blake (Christopher Abbott) who takes his wife and young daughter to his secluded cabin in the woods to relax. Yet what they all find instead is terror after Blake is bitten by a rabid wolf and begins to transform into something not quite human.
Now that Wolf Man is playing in theaters, there’s a decent chance you’re in the mood for similar tales of supernatural creatures and otherworldly transformations. Don’t fret as the following three movies are guaranteed to hold you under their spell for a couple of hours.
The Invisible Man (2020)
Wolf Man wouldn’t exist without The Invisible Man, as that film was a big hit in 2020 before COVID ruined everything. Also directed by Whannell, this iteration takes the concept of the classic H.G. Welles story and updates it to give it a nasty, topical #MeToo spin.
Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) is stuck in an abusive relationship with wealthy tech bro Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). When he commits suicide, she thinks she’s finally free of him … until some strange things happen to her that cause her to believe he’s stalking her with a high-tech suit that makes him invisible.
Yeah, that sounds ridiculous, and that’s why no one believes Cecilia, including her own sister. But as Adrian begins to threaten her friends and family, Cecilia realizes she’s the only one who can stop him. Boasting convincing special effects and a committed lead performance by Moss, The Invisible Man is one of the most inventive horror remakes ever. It shifts the perspective from the Invisible Man to one of his victims, and fully captures the horror of being menaced by someone you can’t see.
The Invisible Man is streaming for free on Amazon Prime Video.
Wolf (1994)
There has to be at least one werewolf movie on this list, and my favorite of the subgenre has always been Wolf, a 1994 movie that isn’t as fondly remembered as it should be. Like Invisible Man, it uses its horror trappings as a metaphor for something we all experience; in Wolf’s case, it’s the cutthroat world of interoffice politics, which is scarier than any lycanthrope you could potentially come across one dark night in the woods.
Jack Nicholson is Will Randle, an editor-in-chief at a New York publishing house who, after a recent merger, is on his way out. One night, he gets bitten by a wolf and finds himself gradually changing into a, you guessed it, wolf. His eyesight improves, his sexual appetite returns with a vengeance, he stands up to a young rival (James Spader) eager to take his place, and he flirts with a cynical heiress (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is sympathetic to Will’s transformation.
But Will’s recent gift is also a curse, and as the police begin to find chewed-up body parts in Central Park, Will realizes he has to stop his transformation at all costs, even if that includes his own life. Directed by Mike Nichols, Wolf is the classiest horror movie ever made, with crisp visuals, a spooky score by the legendary Ennio Morricone, and some great chemistry between co-stars Nicholson and Pfeiffer.
Wolf is streaming on Philo and can be rented and purchased at major digital vendors.
Martin (1977)
This one’s a bit of a stretch, but hear me out. In this 1977 cult classic, twentysomething Martin (John Amplas) believes himself to be a vampire. He certainly acts like one, and on a train ride from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh, he drains the blood of a young woman. He doesn’t have sharp teeth, though, so he uses syringes to extract the blood and drink it.
As Martin settles in Pittsburgh, he arouses the suspicions of his family, especially Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), an elderly cousin who takes Martin’s vampiric tendencies very seriously. Martin eventually becomes attracted to an older woman, Abbie (Elaine Nadeau), and it’s his strange relationship with her that prompts him to see out more victims, and may just be his undoing.
Directed by Night of the Living Dead auteur George A. Romero, Martin isn’t as graphic as the director’s later zombie movies, but it’s more unsettling and weirder. You never know if Martin is really a vampire or not, but Romero makes you sympathize with him, even though he does truly horrible things onscreen. It’s an ideal companion to Wolf Man, which also depicts a man undergoing a strange transformation that acts as a metaphor for his latent aggression toward his family.
Martin is streaming for free on Tubi.
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