Despite a recently released featurette from Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man seemingly giving away the werewolf transformation, the truth is that Whannell’s reimagining of the 1941 Universal Monsters classic doesn’t feature a transformation at all, at least not in the conventional sense.
That’s because the entire film, set over the course of one harrowing night, centers on a man grappling with a long, painful transformation. Instead of turning into a wolf by the full moon, Christopher Abbott’s Blake instead finds himself losing his humanity as strange DNA brutally reshapes his body. Bringing this monstrous, body horror-fueled vision to life on screen was Prosthetics & Special Makeup Effects Designer Arjen Tuiten (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Pan’s Labyrinth).
Tuiten’s task was daunting: designing a Wolf Man that looks nothing like his cinematic counterparts, and one that would slowly transform in stages over one night. Whannell envisioned his Wolf Man as more diseased than canine. Luckily, Tuiten understood and connected with this unique take right away.
“I’d heard about the project lingering around,” the artist told Bloody Disgusting of his early involvement with the project. “I got to talk to Leigh, and he expressed how he was seeing this film, and, based on reading the script and what he was saying, I’m like, ‘I think I know what you’re looking for.’ I did a pass, I think, that night or the following day, and I sent it to him.
“He wrote back the following evening, and he said, ‘You know, I’ve been working on this four years, and you’re the first one to get it, concept-wise.’ He was so relieved, in the sense of what this would look like.“
Prosthetic Designer Arjen Tuiten on the set of Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell.
It’s the story’s tragic quality that Tuiten grasped straightway. “I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a classic tale.‘ But when I read the script, I understood that this is a modern take like Invisible Man, which I loved, and I got it. It’s not the fantastical. It’s the tragedy, the sadness of it. That’s actually something I put in my design. I tried to capture the tragicness of the story, and we connected on that heavily. I like that; it’s something fresh.”
One obvious difference in Tuiten’s interpretation of the Wolf Man is the distinct lack of fur. ‘The hair thing was something Leigh was very adamant about in the beginning, too,“ Tuiten says of his Wolf Man’s lack of fur. “Like, ‘I don’t want to see a whole lot of hair. I don’t want to see what we’ve seen before,‘ and he was adamant about this being an infection. We very much went back and forth about what references we looked at, too. The Fly is a big reference, obviously, where it’s two anatomies trying to mix rather than it becoming a full-blown, beautiful creature where it becomes fantastical. This was something where human anatomy meets the wolf or dog-like anatomy, which is a painful mix.“
Because it’s a long, slow transformation that spans many hours, Christopher Abbott’s physical transformation from family man Blake into something monstrous happens in stages. Tuiten breaks down the stages involved, but more impressively, he notes that Whannell insisted that everything about the character’s metamorphosis happens in camera.
Prosthetic Designer Arjen Tuiten on the set of Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell.
Tuiten explains, “He did say from the beginning, ‘I want everything to be in camera.‘ With films like this, in this day and age, 99% of the time, you’re gonna have a digital transformation. It is so rare that this happens, and he’s asked for that. Every time we see Christopher in the makeup, he looks different, and he slowly starts to transform into this beast. I love that about the story. I think there were about [five stages] on Christopher. I think we did five different complete builds of wigs, teeth, lenses, prosthetics, hands, and chests. I mean, it was endless, really, because everything is in camera. It was a lot of work.”
“Prosthetic makeups quickly look like prosthetic makeup or look fantastical because they’re sculpted,“ the artist says of the sleeker design of the prosthetics. “They’re created by an artist; sculpted. They’re molded. They’re painted. This needed to look real. It needed to look raw and not [like] prosthetic makeup. I understood what he was asking for. I was careful not to carry it too far. And Christopher is such an amazing actor. I needed his emotions to also come through and not be covered by an inch of rubber, where it becomes too rubbery if that makes sense. He’s such an actor’s actor. I didn’t want to do that to him. At the same time, I hope we found the right balance to tell this story.”
Arjen Tuiten, a horror and Universal Monsters fan himself, knows the legacy attached to the character well. That added pressure, which was compounded by time constraints. Luckily, he had support from another SFX Legend who deeply understands the legacy as well: Rick Baker, who was behind the practical work in 2010’s The Wolfman. Baker loaned him a rare gift in support of Tuiten’s work on the film.
Tuiten shares, “The biggest challenge was convincing myself that I did something that people watching the movie will love and grow into over time. I spoke to Rick Baker about it. He’s a good friend of mine, and he’s like, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be very different.‘ He actually lent me Jack Pierce’s makeup case, which he has, and it sat in my office during the build with the hopes that I did something right. That I was following in the footsteps of some very important people.“
Prosthetic Designer Arjen Tuiten on the set of Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell.
There’s no question that the bold new take on the classic monster will be divisive, but Tuiten and his crew put in commendable work in delivering a multi-stage transformation, all handled in camera via practical effects.
“I think I’m most proud that we were able to make the film with the transformation working throughout the film as a whole because that was something that we all weren’t sure about,“ Tuiten answers when asked which part of his design instills the most pride. “We don’t see a digital transformation. Every time we see him, his makeup looks different. Did we get that right? Is the pacing right? I think we achieved it.”
He continues, “The other one is that we actually ended up building a mechanical head as well, an animatronic head and a hand that grows and changes within the camera, and that alone is so rare these days. Any studio would have chosen to do that in post. I can guarantee you that. [Whannell] fought hard to get that in camera, and we did, so it’s in the film.“
Wolf Man howls its way into theaters nationwide this weekend.