Wolfman spoilers ahead.

Tales of part-animal/part-human beings go back to the dawn of humanity. One immediately thinks of the beastly, hairy Enkidu, the rival-turned-friend of King Gilgamesh in the ancient Mesopotamian epic. However, when it comes to werewolves, our modern perceptions of the creatures come straight from Hollywood. The first major werewolf film was Stewart Walker's 1935 horror film Werewolf of London, and it introduced much of what modern pop audiences associate with Wolf Men. The protagonist of "London" was a British botanist named Dr. Glendon (Henry Hull) who discovered a rare planet blooming from the moon in the hills of Tibet... just as he was bitten by a mysterious beast.

Back in London, Dr. Glendon makes a series of discoveries. First, he learns that werewolves are real. He also discovers that they transform around the time of the full moon. He discovered the plant was an antidote and that the werewolf "virus" could be transmitted through a bite. He also reveals that werewolves have to kill every night or they won't turn into humans.

Right from the jump, then, werewolves were a curious mixture of science and magic. There is something in werewolf saliva that "infects" the victim, causing them to become a werewolf themselves, but one's werewolfism is also closely related to full moons and killing curses. These tropes would be solidified in George Wagner's 1941 classic The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Jr. That film has become canonical in the realm of horror films, and The Wolfman is one of the champion Universal Monsters.

Lee Whannell's new movie "Wolfman" is a proper studio reboot of Wagner's film and seems to move away from the traditional "curse" elements. This time, the curse is more of a metaphor.

"Wolfman" follows Blake's life (Christopher Abbott) who was raised in a remote cabin in Oregon by a survivalist father. Blake's father yelled at him and berated him, repeatedly warning the boy that the woods were dangerous and that he needed to learn how to use a gun to survive. His father is not physically abusive, but he has a temper. As an adult, Blake moves to the Big City and settles in with his wife (Julia Garner) and daughter (Matilda Firth). When his father dies, Blake is called back to the cabin in the woods, and must claim it as an inheritance. His family reluctantly agrees to tag along and they pack a moving van for an extended stay in Oregon. Sure enough, there's ... something ... lurking in the woods when they arrive.

Something is a wolf man. This is a creature that Blake encountered as a child, and recalls stories of a hiker who, back in 1995, got lost in the woods and contracted "hill fever," turning them into wild, flesh-eating monsters. Tales of hill fever also coincide with a local First Nation myth of a magical creature that wears a "wolf's face."

Blake is bitten by the Werewolf at the beginning of their journey, and his wolf transformation begins almost immediately. There is no myth, no magic, nothing to do with the full moon. As the film dramatizes, the Wolf Man curse is entirely biological. If there is a curse, it is of the metaphorical variety, symbolically representing the curse of neglect and violent upbringing associated with the forest that Blake experienced as a boy.

Honestly, it's a good thing Wolf Man removed the magical "curse" from the werewolf ethos, because it always contained an element of racist exoticism. "Werewolf of London" was about a white man who discovers the exotic dangers of Tibet. "The Wolf Man" was about a white man who discovers the exotic dangers of the Roma. In many other werewolf films, the creature is a curse brought by First Nation magic to the Caucasian world. Many of these Wolf Man films depict a world where white people are safe in the cities and where magical curses come from threatening "outside cultures". There is an undercurrent of xenophobia in it.

"Wolf Man" has an element of First Nation mysticism - the "wolf face" element mentioned above - but it is not prominent and is not an explanation of where the wolf man's illness comes from. Instead, "hill fever" is considered 100% biological in origin and transmitted through wounds. Whannell's The Wolf Man is a secular monster movie that rejects both the magic of the moon and the fear of other cultures. By turning the "curse" into something metaphorical, it (seemingly) makes the story more interesting to a widespread, secular audience.

Whannell, horror fans may know, also made The Invisible Man reboot in 2020both of his neo-monster films lean as heavily on the "Man" part of the title as "The Invisible" and "The Wolf." The Invisible Man is about a male stalker who tries to manipulate a girl he has emotionally and physically abused and kept prisoner in his house. The Wolf Man also takes a very traditionally masculine element of American culture—hunting and survival—and turns it into something beastly. It's a smart approach.

Wolfman is in theaters now.