Includes SPOILERS for 2025’s Wolf Man reboot!
The new 2025 Wolf Man movie continues a long-lasting trend from the franchise, though it puts a new twist on it. The original Wolf Man movie was released in 1941, with Lon Chaney Jr. playing the lead role as Larry Talbot. This was a character he’d reprise multiple times in the slew of Universal’s classic monster movies, which saw him crossing over with characters like Dracula, Frankenstein, and even comedians Abbott and Costello. Leigh Whannell’s remake transports the film’s premise into the 21st century, requiring a new spin on its events.
Rebooting a classic film franchise is an immense challenge. There’s currently a wave of monster movie remakes in Hollywood, and it’s fascinating to see how different directors interpret these horror characters in the contemporary filmmaking era. Robert Eggers just remade Nosferatu, and Guillermo del Toro has his new Frankenstein film coming out later this year. Leigh Whannell, who previously rebooted The Invisible Man in 2020, delivers a Wolf Man story unlike the previous iterations, with some major differences in how the тιтular monster is characterized.
Wolf Man Continues The Tradition Of Having The Werewolf Die In The End
Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man Ends With Its тιтular Monster’s Death
As is the case with most horror monster films, the werewolf dies at the end of 2025’s Wolf Man. This is a crucial similarity between Leigh Whannell’s version, the classic 1941 movie, and the other 2010 reboot with Benicio del Toro. The Wolf Man story is dark and terrifying, but it’s also one that’s constantly been portrayed as tragic. This monster isn’t like a slasher villain who has no motivation but to kill; he’s a man who’s suffering from an affliction, often forcing him to inflict pain on his loved ones during the night.
The werewolf is the villain, but he’s also the victim, and that duality creates a simplistic but still interesting exploration of how characters and viewers experience empathy.
Wolf Man isn’t a story about perpetrated violence; it’s a story about losing control of the mind to the more animalistic side of the human. With that in mind, it’s crucial for this character to die, as it allows audiences to embrace sympathy for a monster. The werewolf is the villain, but he’s also the victim, and that duality creates a simplistic but still interesting exploration of how characters and viewers experience empathy. The recent movie hones in on the character of Blake Lovell, allowing the audience to resonate with him before he’s sadly ripped away.
2025’s Wolf Man Makes The Werewolf’s Death Blake’s Choice
Blake Forces His Wife’s Hand To Kill Him
Like in Frankenstein, Dracula, or the other classic monster movies, the original Wolf Man film ends with the creature being hunted. In the 2025 version, the critical difference is that the werewolf ends the film in control of his own destiny. First, it’s important to examine how modern filmmaking plays into this. Unlike the Universal classic monster movies of the 1930s and ’40s, modern monster movies typically have a psychological component, with the film’s central conflict being internal rather than external.
Blake Lovell’s story in Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man is about masculinity, parenthood, and about how one’s experiences as a child shape the adult they’re going to become. Wolf Man’s ending shows that, in order for Blake to protect his daughter, he also has to protect her from his father and how he was raised. In his own werewolf form, Blake kills his father’s werewolf form and then allows himself to die. He forces his wife to shoot him, killing him in the same location where his childhood trauma took shape.
Wolf Man Is A More Tragic Version Of 2010’s The Wolfman Ending
Charlotte Didn’t Want To Kill Blake
2010’s The Wolfman wasn’t a well-received reboot despite its all-star cast, holding a 32% score on Rotten Tomatoes currently. However, it’s worth watching to see how different eras depict the same story. The 2010 version involves the werewolf having a love interest, played by Emily Blunt, who ends up shooting and killing him. He attacks her, and she sees a glimpse of the man buried beneath the monster. He then thanks her after she kills him.
The 2010 version of the story is tragic in its own way, but it still comes down to the woman’s choice. In the 2025 Wolf Man version, Julia Garner’s Charlotte doesn’t want to kill her husband and only does so after he beckons her to. It’s more devastating in this case, as the father has to reckon with the fact that he’s done all he can for his family but ultimately has to accept defeat. Blake puts his daughter through a horrible experience, but he ends up doing the right thing, which his father could never do.
