With “Wolf Man,” director Leigh Whannell (“The Invisible Man”) wanted a grounded, real-life, post-COVID reinvention of the classic universal monster. Instead of the traditional lupine curse and hairy transformation every full moon, he imagined it attacking the victim like a virus in progressive stages. Physically, he was more drawn to David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” than John Landis’ “An American Werewolf in London.”
Whannell’s “Wolf Man” finds stay-at-home dad Blake (Christopher Abbott) is attacked by an unseen creature while returning to his family farm with wife Charlotte (Julie Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). They barricade themselves inside; But as night falls, Blake begins to act strangely, with deteriorating skin and wounds that won’t heal. He slowly transforms into something unrecognizable that could pose a threat to his wife and daughter.
Whannell tapped two-time Oscar-nominated prosthetics designer Arjen Tuiten (“Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”) to create the nuanced look with practical effects. Using soft silicone prosthetics, multiple contact lenses and fangs, the transformation marks Blake’s gradual descent into a beast.
“When I first met Leigh, he talked about being locked in during covid and seeing (the transformation) as an infection,” Tuiten told IndieWire. “He wanted it grounded in reality, the rawness of it, how it would work today with the confused man in the woods, where this folklore began.”
The tweet, which borrowed makeup the case of the legendary makeup artist Jack Pierce (“The Wolf Man”) from the living legend Rick Baker to stay by his side, looked at “The Fly” as a reference. He marveled once again at the Oscar-winning work of makeup effects artists Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis.
Like Jeff Goldblum’s Brundlefly, every time we see Blake he looks different. “It’s the slow progression,” Tuiten said. “When you have that, you’re doomed. Leigh was very keen to do everything on camera, every make-up, every prosthetic.” But it was important to never lose sight of Blake’s humanity.
“So we met, he expressed what he wanted, and I just did what my gut told me,” Tuiten continued. “I designed a 30-and-a-half-foot sculpture of Blake on the floor, against the wall, quite sad and tragic, and he’s losing his family and they’re losing their father. I sent it to Leigh one night, and the next morning he emailed me. And he said, ‘You absolutely nailed it.'”
The prosthetic work on Abbott by Tuiten and his crew of 25 artists was divided into five stages. But first, hair and makeup designer Jane O’Kane (“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”) applied transitional makeup to make him look paler. To make it look gradual, she tanned the actor and reverted to his normal skin for the transition.
For stage one, Tuiten gave Abbott very thin cheek and forehead prostheses, dental veneers with infected gums and a three-quarter wig with a receding hairline to simulate the initial hair loss. “The first stage happens when we see him in the basement, where his wife is making radio calls, and he starts peeing his pants,” Tuiten explained. “And he has kind of a pockmarked (early) transformation. We have the infected wound on his arm, he’s losing his molar, he’s pulling his hair out of his head, and we see his fingers on the bed.”
Stage two consists of slightly heavier facial and hand prosthetics, tooth pieces, contact lenses, subtle facial hair, thinning wig work and a forehead piece and small neck pieces. “When he goes into stage two, when he’s on top of the greenhouse and inside the house, he starts falling in and out and not understanding his wife and daughter,” Tuiten added.
In stage three, Blake’s teeth become sharper, his eyes mutate, and his chest and hands evolve with heavier body, arm, hand, and facial prosthetics. This stage also involved fully animatronic replicas of Abbott’s head and hand to simulate bones and jaws breaking off under Blake’s skin.
Meanwhile, in stages four and five, when the transformation becomes more intense and the two anatomies try to blend, Abbott needed six hours in the makeup chair for heavier prostheses. “When I first met Christopher, I was a little worried,” Tuiten said, “because I wasn’t sure if he fully understood what this was going to take every morning.
“But it was great working with him,” he continued. “Christopher switched (into character) as soon as he showed up on location and went into monk mode for the six hours in the chair. I needed him to come to makeup and act through it instead of being hidden. I wanted to make sure he could do their thing, where this needed to be an emotional piece.”
The fact that this was all done in camera, including the animatronic head (which by default would have been done digitally) is a testament to the director’s old school ethos. “People don’t make movies like this with so many in-camera (makeup) effects,” Tuiten said. “ Our pre-production time was short already because of our cast and writer strikes, so my build time was pretty much cut in half.
“But I think what sets this apart from most movies in recent years is that the transformations, whether it’s any creature, are done digitally (with VFX),” he continued. “And my hope is that in years to come, people will appreciate what we’ve done, making 650 prosthetics, with everything done in camera.”
