Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Wolf Man (2025)
Although Wolf Man is far from perfect, director Leigh Whannel’s 2025 Blumhouse movie does justify one egregiously overused Stephen King reference pretty perfectly. 2025’s Wolf Man takes the basic story of Universal’s classic 1941 monster movie and updates it for a 21st-century audience. Christopher Abbott’s Blake Lovell is a writer and stay-at-home father who brings his daughter Ginger and wife Charlotte to his isolated childhood home after his estranged father is declared ᴅᴇᴀᴅ years after going missing.
En route, the family crashes after encountering a strange creature on the road. Blake is scratched by the beast, and the family takes refuge in his father’s empty house, where he begins to undergo a gruesome transformation. Wolf Man’s ending reveals the werewolf that attacked Blake was his father, although few viewers are likely to be shocked by this revelation. While Wolf Man’s changes to werewolf mythology are intriguing, the movie’s threadbare plot makes this twist predictable, and Blake’s lack of character development means his plight isn’t particularly compelling.
Wolf Man’s The Shining Easter Egg Explained
The Winding Mountain Road Is Straight From Kubrick’s Stephen King Adaptation
However, for all of its flaws, Wolf Man deserves props for taking the most overused reference to The Shining and using it in a thematically appropriate way. Early on, Whannell’s movie cuts to an overhead sH๏τ of the Lovell family car winding its slow way through mountain roads, the trees on either side of the road flanking the vehicle. This sH๏τ looks a lot like the famous sH๏τ of the Torrance family’s fateful journey to the Overlook in The Shining’s opening, which might be among the most imitated sH๏τs in horror history.
The sH๏τ of a car snaking through wooded roads uphill has been used countless times elsewhere, appearing in Beetlejuice, Midsommar, Mandy, Us, The Boy, Bats, Fallen, ᴅᴇᴀᴅ End, Silent Hill, Let Me In, Vacancy, Malicious, Sometimes They Come Back, The Open House, Orphan, The Descent, Antichrist, 2024’s Speaks No Evil remake, The Haunting, The Fourth Kind, Green Room, 2016’s Cabin Fever remake, 2023’s Unwelcome, and too many other movies to list. The sH๏τ effectively warns viewers of the isolation the characters face, but has become a cliché over the decades.
Wolf Man’s Story Actually Justified Its The Shining Reference
Wolf Man’s Story Echoes Many of The Shining’s Themes
The trope is so common that a YouTube video of “Foreboding Overhead SH๏τs of Cars Driving on Long Roads in Horror Movies” was compiled by the creator Where Have I Seen This in 2020. However, unlike a lot of movies that reference the classic, Wolf Man actually justifies this reference. Wolf Man mirrors The Shining‘s story of a stressed writer who retreats to an isolated country location, only for supernatural horrors to bring up his dark family history. Both Jack Torrance and Blake Lovell eventually succumb to forces beyond their control and imperil their wives and children.
While Whannel’s pre-Wolf Man movie The Invisible Man was more explicitly concerned with themes of toxic masculinity than his 2025 effort, both movies use horror as a vehicle for exploring the theme. Blake is torn between caring for his family as a sensitive husband and father and turning into the raging, animalistic monster that his disease forces him to become. Much like Jack Torrance’s alcoholism and history of abuse make him more vulnerable to the ghosts of Overlook, Blake’s troubled history with his father leads him to contract the disease that dooms him.
Not All Of Wolf Man’s The Shining Borrows Work
Wolf Man’s Story Is More Rushed Than Kubrick’s Classic Horror
Blake’s entire misguided trip to his childhood home comes about due to a desire to face his demons and resolve his relationship with his late father. Like The Shining’s Jack, Wolf Man’s Blake is torn between the monstrous masculinity epitomized by his distant father and the better man and father he wants to become. That said, not all of Wolf Man’s attempts to borrow from Kubrick’s The Shining work so well.
Kubrick’s movie takes place over a matter of weeks, so Jack’s gradual descent into villainy feels more plausible and compelling. In contrast, Blake’s transformation takes place only a few hours after his introduction, and the entire movie’s story takes place over one night. This results in a plot that feels more rushed. Meanwhile, although Wolf Man’s body horror is gruesomely effective, Blake’s condition makes the movie’s sympathies tougher to discern. While Jack could be read as a tragic anti-villain, he is mostly The Shining’s antagonist.
As good as Wolf Man’s borrows from Stephen King are, not all of them prove as successful as the opening scene’s famous nod.
In contrast, Blake is Wolf Man’s protagonist until the final fifteen minutes, working tirelessly to save his family from another werewolf. The story’s attempts to delve into the sins of the father and unravel cycles of violence fall apart since Blake truly is blameless in his fate, whereas Jack was seduced by the ghosts of the Overlook. Thus, as good as Wolf Man’s borrows from Stephen King are, not all of them prove as successful as the opening scene’s famous nod.
