We join the film 30 years before present day in the company of father (Grady) and son (Blake) on a hunting trip, deep in the woods of Oregon where they live in a wooden cabin. The have an encounter (which comes to nothing beyond some scares) with (what we now know to be) Wolf Man. Or at least, a Wolf Man! We see that father is treating son very strictly, teaching him, hard-nosed, skills he'll need to survive out here in the wild.
Skip to the present where we join Blake as an adult with wife Charlotte and their daughter, Ginger. They live in the city and we discover that Blake had lost touch with his father a long time back. Word was that he had been missing anyway, and now, via a letter he gets, confirmation that the authorities are assuming him dead. He and Charlotte are writers and appear to be going through a bit of dysfunction in their marriage, which they decide they can fix with a trip out to Oregon to collect his dad's belongings. Gulp!
As soon as they get there, they start to get stalked by what they think is some kind of animal which causes them to crash their truck then chases them as they hot-foot it for his dad's cabin. They make it inside but in the chaos, Blake gets bitten on the arm by this creature. It's probably not really anything of a spoiler to say that, like with An American Werewolf in London, we watch the transformation over time of nice chappie into beast. You'll all know what's what here!
So we now have a situation with dad transforming slowly inside the cabin, beast outside the house on the prowl and wife and daughter scared shitless in the mix! The beast is actually different from the one in An American Werewolf in London (and others) because it's not one who comes out every full moon or just at night - once transformed, that's what it is.
You can imagine that we then have a bunch of situations as the three of them (initially) try to escape (of course, there's no mobile phone signal) and find themselves in a whole load of different scenarios, scary setups and adventures(!) as the chase is on to stay alive (and watch dad go the way he's going)!
The cast do a decent enough job, Christopher Abbott (Poor Things) as Blake, Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel, The Assistant, Ozark, Apartment 7A) as Charlotte and Matilda Firth (Subservience) as Ginger. There's some neat ideas going on where camera position moves around in order to let the audience see/hear what the beast is seeing/hearing, then circles to do the same with the other characters, not impacted by the 'virus'. There are a few scenes of gory body-horror type stuff to enjoy, but not that many.
The set is within the shadowy woods, like a good fairy tale would be, eerie, dark, menacing with some decent-enough attempts at tension and suspense. Thankfully, silly jump-scare moments are at a minimum so the viewer can soak up the atmosphere and feel a bit of the terror experienced by, particularly, the two females. There's some lovely scenery on show - not sure if it's real or CGI, but it's very nice eye-candy.
It's all a bit of a chilling, thrill-ride really and clearly everyone was having a hoot riding, though there's not really much development on show regarding the characters - most of that is done, what we're getting, in the first 15 minutes of the one hour and forty-five. An excellent romp that entertained me, though not as good as The Invisible Man. It's available in cinemas in the UK or to rent/buy on a couple of streaming services so far, so use your vouchers!
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