Pop Culture Happy Hour - Wolf Man And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Everything old is new again, it seems, and there's no reason that wouldn't apply to werewolves. We now have a chance to enjoy a new Wolf Man starring Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner. Directed by Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man), it maintains that sometimes the monster is inside you all along. Plus, we take a minute to remember director David Lynch. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Everything old is new again, it seems, and there's no reason that wouldn't apply to werewolves. We now have a chance to enjoy a new Wolfman. And of course, it maintains that sometimes the monster is inside you all along. I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about Wolfman on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is my co-host, Glenn Weldon. Hello, Glenn. Hey, Linda. Also with us is B.A. Parker. She's one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast. Welcome to the show, Parker. Hi. And also with us is filmmaker, pop culture critic, and Iheart radio producer Joelle Monique. Good to see you, Joelle. Thanks for having me back. For a little context, Wolfman is part of an effort to reboot what are known as the Universal Monsters

that were featured in Universal Pictures films in the first half of the 20th century. So that includes Dracula, it includes Frankenstein, and it includes the Invisible Man. In 2020, Elizabeth Moss starred in The Invisible Man, which was written and directed by Blumhouse's Lee Wanel. He directed and co-wrote this here Wolfman movie. So that is why you are suddenly getting a werewolf movie in 2025. It's a whole thing. So here, Christopher Abbott plays Blake, a gloomy dad who takes his gloomy wife and their daughter, to the creepy old house in Oregon that he's just inherited from his father.

Now, he's a writer, and his wife Charlotte, played by Julia Garner, is a journalist, so it is no wonder why they are so gloomy. Anyway, legend has it that the woods around the house are home to a disappeared hiker who now has suspiciously wolf-like qualities, so you don't want to be out there after dark. But Blake and his family do wind up out after dark, and it does not go well. And as Blumhouse has chosen to reveal in all the promotion for this film, Blake has a run-in with this creature. And before you know it, he himself is starting to look a little too hairy and a little too ravenous for Charlotte's comfort. So over one very long night, the family tries to survive as threats from inside and outside grow. Wolfman is in theaters now. Now, Glenn, I am starting with you as to Wolfman.

What did you think about Wolfman? You know what? Sure is where I came down. I mean, I would be lying if I said there weren't a couple moments, especially in the early going when I started to wonder, like, we've been on this road a while. I would have hoped to have seen at least the first sign for the fireworks factory by now. But that went away. We eventually get there. There is an element of just given the premise that you said, like there's an element of we know where this is going.

So it's incumbent upon the filmmakers to innovate and complicate and layer that. And on a purely narrative level, I think they did it. I mean, I love that it happens in one night. I love the switching of viewpoints. We are in the point of view seeing of the family, seeing him change, but then sometimes we switch over to him, seeing them as they get further and further away from him. That felt smart. That felt interesting. That felt fun.

There is a third act reveal in this film that the film seems to think is a moment of, oh, my God. But it turns out to be a moment of. Yeah, no, duh. Yeah, it was for me too. Which we can't really talk about that. But, I mean, I don't think it holds a candle to Invisible Man for reasons we'll get into, but I went along with it. All right. What a ringing and enthusiastic endorsement.

Parker, how about you? What did you think? I think that Christopher Abbott's eyelashes deserve more IMAX features. Sure. Sure. Aside from that, I don't know. I thought it was fine compared to Invisible Man, which was like a distressing horror. film, this felt slightly milk toast in like how it was trying to address, we'll say,

toxic masculinity within the universal monsters. Like, I can't wait for, I don't know, like the mummy's an in cell and Van Helsing's complicit in like police states. So that's how I came out of it like with out spoiling anything. Mm-hmm. Joel, I feel like I am grasping for a strong and vibrant opinion, and I feel like I can always count on all of the people on this call. But so far it has been a little not that much. What did you think about Wolfman? For another project, I have been doing a deep dive on the Hammer Films' Wolfman versions. So I watch the OG Wolfman. I watch Wolfman meets Frankenstein, super underrated film.

And so I've been spending a lot of time with this character lately, Mr. Talbot. I feel like this movie made some really interesting choices to try to update this narrative. You know, this is a series again and again that's sort of looking at a father-son dynamic and trying to articulate, you know, what is it? to step into your manhood and be both equals to your father, maybe you've surpassed your father, basically your dad. And so, like, trying to find that balance. This film does something really interesting and takes the dad out of it. And instead of looking at a guy becoming a man, sort of like a guy as a father, and it pushes past the initial, like, how do I do this into?

I've established myself as a father already. And so from that angle, it's really interesting. My problem as a horror freak is, like, it wouldn't scare. at all. Yeah. On top of that, I hated the creature design. I have a sneaking suspicion that Hollywood is over sexy monsters and they're like, what if we just made them all ugly?

And I'm not here for it. Bring back the sexy monsters. Nosiratu, ugly as hell. Wolfman, ugly as hell. I don't appreciate it. It was trying to do something which I really value in a film, but I just don't think it didn't reach the levels it was trying to set out for itself. Yeah.

I really profoundly disliked this movie and I was very, I was very mad. at this movie, especially the more I read about kind of the production of it. Because my feeling watching this film was, what in the heck is this supposed to be about? Because it opens with this long set piece of young Blake with his father out in the deer stand and this idea that they are being threatened by this creature off in the woods. For one thing, it's like a very long, just sit there and wait for jump scares thing, which I do not. enjoy. And then they also sort of never really happen the way you think they're going to. So it feels like an awfully long setup that doesn't necessarily pay off. And then as the film continued, I was like, what is this supposed to be about? Because I love The Invisible Man. That is not just

one of my favorite, like, scary movies. It's one of my favorite movies of the last few years. Genuinely, a brilliant. It is so crystal clear in what it is supposed to be about, that it is about the experience of domestic violence. It is about, you know, people who are controlling. It is about gaslighting to an enormous degree. And it's to me such an interesting and relevant way to think about this idea of like, how do you make an Invisible Man movie that feels really, like, fascinating and special. And this to me was just like, what if you turn into a wolf and chased people around? And then I started to read the production notes a little bit. And it turns out that, To Wanel and to the actors, this is a degenerative disease metaphor.

Oh, no. This is all about, like, what it's like when someone becomes ill and you just see them, like, getting worse and worse in front of your eyes, right? Oh, no. That's bad. Christopher Abbott says, we talked about things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. And I was like, that is not a person turning into a monster. That is, I understand what they're going for, that it's.

painful for to see people change in ways that you don't expect. But I do not think you can jump to a monster idea for a person with a degenerative illness. That is a leap in a jump. Once I found out it was supposed to be a disease movie, it actually really ticked me off. Because I am bothered by the idea of presenting disease as turning into a monster, you know? Yeah. I have experience with Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's can be terrifying from literally every angle. And I think the idea of what happens when someone who is gentle and sweet and kind becomes violent as they're losing their mind, which is something that happened to my grandfather. You know, I think there's a lot of story in there that's worth exploring and trying to on earth and talking about. But here, you don't really get a sense of that.

You know, you're talking about the first act in this introduction of the father. This is where I think the movie falls apart, which is really unfortunate because it's literally the first act. But as an audience member, I didn't understand why our main character's father is so terrified. They really lean into, hey, it's scary out here. You could die easily. Clearly, he's some kind of disturbed. He's got like an underground bunker where he's talking to friends and like, I've seen this creature. You guys should come.

Don't even want to protect your child. But you don't understand his legacy of fear. And because you don't understand that, it feels silly. Yeah. And then you have this very drawing cut to the city 30 years later where everything previously is hyper-masculine. It's guns and bunker. and were in the woods hunting. And then you see, you know, your character aged up.

He's with his daughter. He's carrying like a giant pink stuffed teddy. And like she's in a tutu with ballerina wings. And at first I was like, is this about, it felt like very gendered. Like the city, very feminine, like safe over here, masculine. And then as you go on, you're like, okay, well, he's got this really rough relationship with his wife. There's clearly love here maybe.

You're so lost in what do these characters want? What are they actually afraid of? That the rest of the movie, it never has a hope. trying to make sense because you feel so disoriented from the initial start. There's an excellent horror film called Relic that's about three generations of women who are dealing with the threat of Alzheimer's and it's being used as like a haunting. So like there's a mark on your body that grows and grows and grows and grows and it's like symbolic for dementia. So when you're talking about that, I'm like, oh, there's a great horror movie over here that

already deals with this from like a female approach that's interesting. When I think about Wolfman, And watching that, I remember there's like a moment. I feel like the thesis of the film was when he was like, we're so worried about like the kids having scars that we end up becoming the scar. And I was like, oh, that's a very deliberate thesis of what this film is. Right. It's like I get that idea, but I'm not sure it comes through in the movie. Glenn, what do you think? Well, I think we're all picking up on the central thematic muddiness of this film.

My take is that they approach this film. They realized they were going to do a film about where. And they started to realize, wow, there's a lot of resonance metaphorically with a lot of different things. Because right away, I mean, we talk about the disease aspect. That's kind of baked into the werewolf myth, right? Because lechanthropy is a disease. And it's, you can imagine that these stories of werewolves arose out of people trying to figure out what rabies was. Like, that's probably where all these stories came from.

But that's one thing. But there's also in this film generational trauma. There's also in this film, and it's only hinted at it. But like the guy is wearing a USMC jacket. He's got something that looks like a dog tag. I think he's the wrong shape or a dog tag. So either he went to an Army Navy's surplus store or he served. Are we bringing PTSD into this?

Well, and what somebody wears in a film that takes place over the course of one night is very intentional because they're going to wear it for the whole movie. You know, we're most of the whole movie. So thematically muddy as hell, I don't think this film decided on what it's about. I will say, though, tonally, I think it has the courage of convictions in that narrow sense. because I think it's playing tonally in the same sandbox that Invisible Man is, because it's committing to the grimness and sombrness vibe, while actively not, and gratifyingly, I think, not trying to distance itself from the genre stuff.

I mean, it exists in the same space where, for example, watching Elizabeth Moss get tossed around her kitchen like a rag doll by nothing. As you're watching it, it's harrowing and it's brutal. At the same time, simultaneously, it's a little silly. And the film doesn't try to dismiss that or overcompensate for that. It admits that experience if you're watching somebody hurl themselves around the kitchen. Like that's part of watching this film. A lot of scenes like that exist in this movie where I think the filmmakers,

I don't want to say that they're being remotely comic. This is not a comic film. Just like Invisible Man, it's not a comic film. And they're not winking. It's not arch. But they're admitting that, yeah, we are addressing these very heavy themes. But at the same time, this is a creature feature. You know, it's not either or.

It's why not both. Especially in those moments when Blake gives in to his, like dog-like, wolf-like instincts, they are gross and they're kind of funny. And I liked when, for example, they're trying to escape in the truck and Blake kind of instinctively, he hops in the back seat.

And I was like, yeah, right, that's what he would do. And if that scene had played out further and they had gone to a drive-in Starbucks and gotten him a puppuccino, I would have loved that film. My first reaction to it was at the beginning of the film, I just didn't think did enough to set up the characters. They spent all this time

on this long deer stand section at the beginning. But then you dive in and you get like, you know, a minute and a half, it feels like with this couple before they go off to Oregon to live in this remote house. I didn't feel like I understood who she was at all. No. The earlier asked question of why are they together? Why are they married? What is the source of all this, like, conflict? There's something in the press notes about that she's like a high-powered journalist.

and he, like, I didn't get that. I kind of got that she was just, like, working occasionally on things. And the daughter is not, to me, a character. She's just, like, is there to be the person that they are worried about. I just didn't think they set these people up to be developed characters at all. And I felt like there was a ton of something that was missing that would explain kind of who are these people. What is their conflict about? because, you know, you see them kind of have a conversation where he says, I feel like we're not doing very well right now.

Yeah. But how does it have to do with the power dynamic in the marriage? Is he resentful of being a stay-at-home dad? Because it seems like he's not. But, you know. And that's to your point, too, about the little girl, she's daddy's girl. Like, that's it. She's absolutely not a person.

Listeners may be wondering why we're only talking about, like, the first quarter of this film. It's because nothing else happens after this. Oh, that's real. To kick it back to the invisible man. All of those fights escalate. And not just in the amount of violence, but in can she get out. Oh, she almost has a chance. Man, this guy's really got a grass.

She can't get out. And it increases your anxiety and terror for the character because increasingly she has to try more and more to do things. Here, the family's just bouncing around. This is not a good, like, it's almost a haunted house-esque in that they get to his father's house in the middle of the woods and they do a lot of hiding in there. But none of that is filmed really well. Even every wolf movie in the history of Wolfman movies, it's the transformations are so key and vital to what makes them either success or a flop.

Like I also recently watched the 2010 Wolfman and Wolf also many issues. It's really a struggle. But at least in that film, they're trying some really interesting things with the transformation here. I mean, I think you just have to go more wolf than man. I think he's so human the whole time. I really felt like through the entire second act and really late into the third act even that we weren't evolving story at all and it just felt so stilted. Even when they tried to do something visually interesting, which is you can see through the wolf's eyes at one point, everything kind of becomes as like rainbowy hyper affected and there's, he sees his family and their eyes are sort of whited out and you're like, okay, this doesn't feel like how dogs see. I'm not really sure what this transformation is.

is it here to distort between human and beast? I use quotes. No, there was a moment. I was like, oh, is this supposed to be like symbolic of their marriage where they're speaking two different languages? Maybe. They're not understanding each other, but they're trying to say the same thing. Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, see, we're all reaching for things. And that's because the film is reaching for things. It didn't really decide on a fixed, clear metaphor like like Invisible Man did. Like in The Shining, right? Sure, the Shining is about ghosts. but really that film is about alcoholism. And when you have that kind of thematic, metaphorical clarity, that gives you a backbone, that gives you a substance, that gives you staying power, which this film, I'm, it's, we're not going to be talking about this film in like a month. No, I agree.

I think they did not really come up with a story. And I think that is the biggest problem. But I will say, it made me re-appreciate Invisible Man and think about how much I like it and why I like it and how really stupendent. good that opening sequence where she's escaping from the house is. And what a great job. I think that sequence does in building investment in that character. And that's what I'm missing maybe from this. So every time you see something that you don't like, sometimes it's an opportunity to be like, I didn't like it. But it makes me think about the difference between that and this other thing that, you know, I really did like. So nothing is

wasted time. Nothing is wasted time. Tell us what you think about Wolfman. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH and on letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. Up next, what's making us happy this week? Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Joelle, what is making you happy this week? Okay, I don't know if you guys have covered this yet.

I was trying to look for your episode because I was curious about your thoughts. Have you guys seen the agency on Paramount Plus? I have. Oh, my God. It's been my new evangelism. I'm like, have you seen the agency? He should talk about the agency. It stars Michael Vaspender, Jeffrey Wright, and Jody Turner Smith. The first episode is directed by Joe Wright. Fabulously.

So good. The story is about a CIA agent who's been too quickly pulled back from undercover. He's got to go back to his real life. But he had already started this beautiful relationship undercover. And it happens too fast. There's not enough transition. So he has to abandon his old life and all these connections he's had. And that's really a challenge.

He comes back. He's working for the CIA, but he works in the London office. And all of a sudden, this love that he had in his past life shows up. And oh, my God, is she an agent or is it just happenstance? And the universe wants them to be together. You know Joe Wright does romance so well. It's equal parts romance and espionage. It's the perfect time to jump in.

It is excellent. So fun to watch. Beautifully filmed. So well written. One of the best pilots I've seen in a long, long time. I love the agency. So that is awesome. I am so glad.

Thank you very much, Joelle. The agency on Paramount. Plus, Parker, you, I could tell, also are a fan of the agency, but what else is making you happy this week? The thing that's making me happy this week is the pit. I don't know if y'all have done any of the pit yet. But it's basically, I don't know, it's ER in Pittsburgh, and I'm now realizing too late that that that's what's called, part of it's called the pit. It's part of why. Like, as a 90s kid, I'm never mad at Noah Wiley employment.

So it's him as like the head doctor of an ER in Pittsburgh. and it's, um, every episode is an hour at that ER during that day. So the whole season is going to be one day like 24. All the nostalgia of like the old ER plus like now it's, it's on max. So there's more like realism, but like more honesty and how you can portray some of these scenarios. Uh, there's like having to deal with, um, someone who's like trying to tell a family that their child's brain did. Like a mom is trying to deal with her son being an in cell. There's like all of these different. just like a slice of life like scenarios within an ER that I didn't realize I miss so much.

The show ended when like, you know, what, 2000? Yeah, I don't even know. Like a long time. So now like the pit is like this lowly nostalgia that's making me feel good right now. It's only two episodes out right now. And if they're doing the thing that comes on once a week, it's like Thursday nights like ER used to. So I'm like, oh, this is nice. Yeah.

This feels good. This feels right. Yeah, we haven't covered it yet, but we're going. So that's the pit on Max. Thank you, Parker. So now I'm going to switch gears. We're going to pull back the curtain just a little bit after Glenn and I got together with Parker and Joelle to talk about Wolfman in the conversation you just heard. We got the news that director David Lynch had died. He was 78 years old. He directed Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, co-created Twin Peaks, of course. He was a towering and hugely influential figure in film and television. And I know you were a big fan of his work, so we decided to hop back in the studio so that you could give listeners, you know, some thoughts and maybe some recommendations for the weekend. What are you thinking about how he's likely to be remembered? Well, I think you're probably going to see a lot of appreciations about him, you know, exposing the darkness and depravity hidden behind white picket fences and, you know, the seamy underbelly of suburbia. And that's certainly true, at least with his most popular works, like Blue Velvet you mentioned and the TV series Twin Peaks.

They both kind of concern themselves with that. But I think it's more accurate to say that he was a filmmaker drawn to the world of dreams, the power of dreams, how dreams intersect with reality, how they inform reality, how they're always kind of bubbling away in the subconscious, defining, helping to define how we perceive the world. And so what many critics considered his masterpiece is Mulholland Drive, which, like a lot of his work, uses dream logic, which is to say it's not the logic of a narrative structure that connects things scene to scene. It's not like this happened, then this happened because that happened, and then this happened because that happened. It's not that. It's emotions that are the kind of connective tissue for his work. And characters and scenes and even events group themselves together because they make us feel a certain same kind of way. But I think he's most compelling to me when he dials back some of those surreal impulses to let a traditional storytelling structure kind of impose itself, right? So you get something like the television series Twin Peaks.

That was, people forget, but we were there, Linda. That was mainstream appointment broadcast network television. ABC TV. ABC TV. It premiered against cheers and wings. And, you know, as you mentioned, he did co-create that series with Mark Frost. Together, the two of them snuck some very disturbing, very surreal, and hugely cinematic, capital C, cinematic images and ideas into American living rooms, into the heads of millions of people who would never. be caught dead watching an art film, right?

Exactly. I mean, it's one thing to say how experimental it was in general, but how experimental it was for network television is another level entirely. Like nothing so weird had probably ever aired on network TV in my lifetime. Absolutely. And so I've got two recommendations, a film and a television episode. Check out Mulholland Drive on Criterion. And that's him at the height of his powers making a movie that only he would ever make. It is about an aspiring actress who meets a woman with amnesia. At least that's what it starts out being. And then watch the eighth episode of Twin Peaks, The Return, the third season of Twin Peaks,

which was made more than 25 years after the original series went off the air. That's on Paramount Plus. And look, you don't need to be familiar with any of his work to get a sense of who he was as a filmmaker from those two things. If you're not familiar with his work, you're going to come away. And even if you're familiar with his work, you're going to come away from those two watches. Very confused. They are simply not interested in telling him.

a simple story simply and clearly. They're simply interested on offering you a visual experience where story takes a backseat to things like emotions and imagery. You're welcome to try to piece together what they're so that means and plenty of people do all over the internet.

Yeah. But that's not what he was about. He wanted you to feel something and he made movies and TV that pretty much ensured you're going to feel something. I'm sure there will be much said about David Lynch

and we are here for all of it. And thanks to him for all the very great work. And thank you for sharing those recommendations. You know, it has been kind of a bruising week. And as a result, I asked on social media, this is sort of more in the realm of what is making me happy. I asked on social media for some recommendations for audiobooks that were light and funny and digestible and joyful. The people that really nailed it were the two people who told me to listen to the two audiobooks written by and narrated by Philomena Kunk. She basically, Philemina Kunk is a character who is essentially a no-nothing investigative reporter.

And she goes around and makes these grand proclamations about the world and everything. And she's totally uninformed. And she says things that are like one-third correct or two-thirds correct, but they're very incorrect. There are two audiobooks. One is called Kunk on Everything. The other one is called The World According to Kunk. And a great thing about these, if you are in a kind of a difficult moment and you need some entertainment, is that not only are they very funny, but also they are like in Kunk on everything, it's alphabetical. So there's an entry for art.

There's an entry for architecture. It just goes through and has a little like blurb about each thing. It's like a dictionary by a person who doesn't know anything, which means if you get distracted, your attention wanders, you can come right back to it. It doesn't make any difference. You could just figure out what she's talking about. It was exactly what I wanted. So the audiobooks, again, are written and narrated by Philomena Kunk, who is not a real person. She is a character. But that is how they are listed. That is Philemona Kunk. I would start with Kunk on everything. That's what's making me happy this week. And I was very, very great. for it. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some additional recommendations, sign up for our newsletter. That's at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. This episode was produced by Hufzapathema and Lenin Sherburn and edited by Mike Katzif and Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes and we'll see you all next week.