

Interviews
Interview With Director Leigh Whannell (Wolf Man)
Leigh Whannell loves horror movies just as much as you think he does. If you ask anyone in the horror community to name the most influential figures since the start of this millennium, chances are Whannell’s name would be among the first. The affable writer-director may be best known for his transformative work on the first three Saw films, but he’s since carved out a niche of his own: Leigh’s original output has been focused squarely on formally exuberant, emotionally complex genre films. He’s unafraid to inject his works with a healthy dose of experimentation, all the while paying homage to the masters of horror who came before him.
In the past 10 years, Whannell’s work has been inextricably tied to classic horror cinema. As a follow-up to his blisteringly gory tribute to 80s genre filmmaking, Upgrade (2018), Leigh ventured into the world of Universal Monsters. With The Invisible Man (2020), Whannell redefined an icon: by modernizing the unseen monstrous entity, he retraced it back to its terrifying roots. In his latest Blumhouse-backed effort, Wolf Man, the Australian horror master hopes to give his audience yet another fresh take at an age-old horror figure. Ahead of the film’s release, I caught up with Leigh Whannell to examine the humanity of the monster, the tragedy of degenerative diseases, as well as the deeply personal backstory behind the film’s origins.
The full video interview HERE:
TRANSCRIPT
Dimitri Kraus: I was really moved by Wolf Man. It shares a lot of the same DNA with The Invisible Man: both grounded and brutal, yet very emotionally affecting films. In Wolf Man, you experiment with points of view: once the family unit is shattered, you reshape the narrative and we get two different perspectives. Was it difficult to for you to balance it out?
Leigh Whannell: I think it is sometimes difficult to balance things out while you’re making a film. You need that roadmap, as you’re making the film out of sequence. Although, when we were in the house, we tried to shoot in the script order as much as we could. But a lot of the time you’re shooting out of sequence, each day you’re making another short film, so you really need to keep track of the emotional map. The north star for me (and for Christopher Abbott) was perspective, this idea that they are speaking a different language. When people are separated by an invisible force. Like if someone in your family, someone close to you, has brain cancer… They’re changing. The way they’re viewing you is not the same anymore. Someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s, from their perspective, they don’t know who you are anymore. So I thought the challenge for this movie was: what if we shot a movie where you’re actually seeing half the movie from the perspective of a person with dementia so it’s just strangers, and the other half of the movie from the side of the aggrieved people. That was really what we kept in mind throughout the whole thing.
DK: It’s something that really struck a chord with me. You’ve already mentioned how we get the perspective of someone who’s maybe no longer human, grappling with their humanity and the love for their loved ones, despite not being able to perceive them. You always experiment with form, and in this film we get that through Christopher Abbot’s unique POV, the so-called “Wolf Vision”. How did you go about creating that visual look?
LW: Ha yeah that’s what we called it on set. Wolf vision time! I’m really happy to hear you say that about experimenting with form, as I really do think it’s one of the most fun parts of making a film. When you look at the material, the script, you think: what am I gonna bring to this that is unique? The camera is such a malleable instrument – there’s no one way to tell a story. Is there something I could do in this that maybe people haven’t seen before? It’s a lofty challenge. Stefan Duscio, the cinematographer that I work with, I would call him during the script stage and say: “Okay, I’m writing The Invisible Man, what do we think about the camera just being this presence that would pan away from the main actors, and we’re gonna weaponize empty space?” So he’ll start thinking about it, emailing me little notes, videos… He’s great at research. And so we start figuring out the language, and it might not be something huge, it could be something small, but it’s our language. We really do try to do that. For Wolf Man, it was: how are we going to present his side of it? It starts very pragmatically. We looked at how wolves see, the colour range they see in. Stefan started emailing me videos of UV cameras and he was like: “What if we used a UV camera?” And then I remember, they used that in the second Dune film. So we were thinking, “Okay, they stole our idea” [laughs]. But we were really thinking about what sort of camera equipment we could use to convey the way a wolf sees. It’s really that conversation, that’s how it starts, and eventually we landed on just doing it very practically on set. We would have the gaffer turning the dial in the moment and changing the light.
DK: Oh, so that was all in camera?!
LW: We would augment it with visual effects – like the particles in the air, definitely augmented with visual effects – but the lighting is in camera, believe it or not. Definitely using VFX and utilizing that at the end, but it was great to actually be able to use the lights in the moment.
DK: That’s fantastic. You’ve said many times how you want both The Invisible Man and Wolf Man to be your own unique monsters, unbeholden to their predecessors. In another interview, you mentioned how you screened Michael Haneke’s Amour to your cast and crew. When Chris Abbott came on board as the titular Wolf Man, what kind of guidance did you give him for your vision of this character?
LW: With Chris, I really talked a lot about disease and degenerative illnesses. We talked a lot about dementia and Alzheimer’s. He had someone close to him in his family who was suffering from Alzheimer’s when he was growing up, so he had this really personal touchstone for that. I had a close friend of mine who was suffering ALS and has now passed away. We had these really personal touchstones for disease and that was the angle, always. When we were developing Chris’s walk… He lives in New York and I was in Los Angeles, so we would be on Zoom calls, and he’d walk around his apartment showing me these different walks. He had a movement coach who was helping him with animal tics and animal behaviour, the way an animal’s attention is grabbed by sound. All these little things, so you start adding these little brushstrokes. Hopefully, it adds up to this whole picture. I love it. I feel like horror movies don’t get recognized as much as they should by awards ceremonies, but I really think Chris’s performance encapsulates all the tools at an actor’s disposal. He’s doing theatre techniques and movement, it’s just great to watch.
DK: It really is incredible. We get two completely different characters from him: one a father, the other almost non-human yet still trying to feel that father’s love. It’s really interesting how he conveys that feeling through his physicality.
LW: Yes.
DK: We’ve touched upon the subject matter of family. If I may ask: you co-wrote this film with your wife, Corbett Tuck?
LW: [enthusiastically] Yes.
DK: It’s interesting, because for me horror has always been an escape, almost like a release from a lot of things…
LW: Yes, me too!
DK: When you were writing this film, I guess during COVID, was it a comforting experience to share with your loved one? Especially for a film about family like this one?
LW: It was! It was very cathartic. You remember, that first year of COVID was so discombobulating. Not being able to go outside, not knowing what was happening, getting tested. I don’t how it was going in the UK, but in Los Angeles they’d have these drive-thru test sites where people in biohazard suits would stick a q-tip up your nose [laughs]. It felt like something out of a science fiction movie, all of a sudden you’re living inside Contagion. It was such a discombobulating time that Corbett and I were putting everything into the script. All the parenting, too. It was very hard to parent at that time, cause you couldn’t go out. Here we are, trying to make the couch fort interesting for 600 days in a row. So it was very cathartic and, I think, helpful to us. It was also helpful for us to have something to do, instead of sitting around and going mad. We’d actually set hours and write each day – it kept us from going insane.
DK: That’s amazing, thank you so much! Best of luck with the release.

-
News3 weeks ago
Programme For 2025 Glasgow Film Festival Unveiled
-
Features1 week ago
The Death of Fantastic Beasts: Why Was It Cancelled?
-
Movie Reviews3 weeks ago
William Tell ★★★
-
Interviews4 weeks ago
Behind Closed Doors with Jasmine Eriksson
-
Featured Review3 weeks ago
Memoir Of A Snail ★★★★★
-
Features1 week ago
MM Shorts – Sister Wives
-
News1 week ago
Iris Prize Reveals 2025 ‘On The Move’ UK Tour
-
Movie Reviews3 weeks ago
Presence ★★★★