From Saw to Wolf Man: Leigh Whannell and the Aussie horror renaissance

A young man sporting the iconic late-90s fringe sat next to Dylan Lewis on the youth culture program "Recovery," reviewing the newly released horror film "Anaconda." He was thrilled by the creature feature, calling it "quality trash," to the point of being somewhat incoherent. That young man was 20-year-old Leigh Whannell, who, years later, would help redefine the horror movie genre.

"I didn't realize what a great gig 'Recovery' was at the time," Whannell laughs. "I remember interviewing directors and thinking, 'I don't want to interview Tim Burton, I want to be Tim Burton.' So I was probably too unappreciative back then." Determined to make his mark in the film industry, Whannell and his Australian compatriot James Wan penned the script for the thriller-horror "Saw" in the early 2000s. Despite a modest production budget, "Saw" broke box office records and spawned nine horror sequels (and counting) and a spin-off.

The huge box office success of "Saw" prompted Whannell and Wan to collaborate again, this time on the multiple "Insidious" horror films – the third of which Whannell tried his hand at directing. After achieving huge critical and commercial success with the self-written and directed "The Invisible Man" in 2020, Whannell is again dipping his toe into Universal’s monster series, this time with "Wolfman."

Set in the quiet, eerie forests of Oregon (actually filmed in New Zealand), "Wolfman" follows city-dweller Blake (Christopher Abbott) as he returns to the dilapidated farm where he grew up with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). It's not a happy homecoming. Blake’s father has finally been legally declared dead after being missing for many years, and he’s gathered his family to clear out the house. On the way to the remote farm, an accidental violent encounter results in an injury to Blake's arm, and an unsettling feeling that something is…changing. "Horror movies are all around us," director Leigh Whannell tells SyFy, "A child losing their mother to cancer is a horror story. So, we use these monster movies to externalize things that happen in real life…like a family member feeling like they don't recognize you anymore."

Whannell’s "Wolfman," adapted from the 1941 monster movie of the same name, goes beyond the typical creature feature – there is a melancholic sadness that comes with Blake’s transformation into the legendary werewolf. "We've seen the traditional version of the werewolf so many times before," Whannell says, "I thought, 'If you're going to spend a year or more making this film, what are you going to do that's unique?'" Australian director Leigh Whannell’s latest offering is a re-imagining of the classic werewolf, but beneath all the hair and horror lies a darker, more nuanced story about family, love, and loss. This werewolf, like so many before him, is a terrifying beast on the outside, but Abbott manages to retain an incredible humanity in the character's eyes, which remains even as fingers lengthen and fangs sprout.

As the audience is repelled by the grotesqueness, Whannell shifts the perspective: the audience sees it all through Blake's eyes. Walls move and melt, the eyes of those he loves glow white, and their loving calls turn into garbled nonsense. Blake is trapped not only physically but also mentally. It is heartbreaking from any perspective. "From the start, perspective was important to me, and the subjective, through sound and visuals, shift," Whannell says. "It was an integrated thing, the visual effects were a great tool but there were practical elements as well. We were actually changing the light manually, you know, just turning a knob to change the lighting. I like that handmade feel to it." And this deliberate manipulation of perspective is designed to pull at the heartstrings. "Ultimately, you can't control the tear ducts, but if someone says, 'I cried at the end,' I'm the happiest."

But that is not to say that the sadness in "Wolfman" outweighs the scares. In addition to the heart-wrenching horror of watching someone you love turn into something you no longer recognize, the dark, ominous house and grounds are the perfect backdrop for classic horror scares. Harking back to his "Saw" days, Whannell ramps up the tension immediately after the Lovell family enters the woods – using the unknown and unseen to elicit fear in both the characters and the audience. "Horror audiences today are so media-literate, they've seen hundreds of hours of movies and TV, they've subconsciously learned those tropes and tricks," Whannell says. "You know what the audience expects. I know what the lazy choice is, and knowing that allows me to go in the opposite direction. That's my golden rule going in, is expectation. If the audience thinks you're going to go right, go left."

"You have to weaponize the frame against the audience." While Whannell has the ability to make even an invisible breath lifting off a fence terrifying, he also uses some well-timed jump scares to great effect. "A lot of movies overdo it, so my rule going in is: if you're going to do it, go straight for the jugular. Don't waste that scare opportunity."

The Australian horror scene has never been so vibrant, with a slew of exciting new homegrown genre films like "Talk to Me," "Late Night With The Devil," "Sissy," "Mogwai," and "The Babadook." "When James Wan and I were pitching 'Saw,' I felt like there was no horror scene in Australia, it didn't feel like a community at all," Whannell says. "After the premiere of 'Wolfman,' a lot of young people came up to me and said, 'I grew up watching your movies. You inspired me to become a horror director.' I'm proud that James and I seem to have played some part in this new horror resurgence that's happening. But I think it's just a recent thing." After making movies for 20 years, Whannell says his views on film criticism have changed, a far cry from his teenage years on "Recovery." "Now that I'm on the other side of the iron curtain, I'm much more forgiving of movies," he laughs. "Once you realize how hard it is to make a movie, you start to realize, 'Oh, it's a miracle that any movie gets made, let alone a good one.'" "Wolfman" is in cinemas now.