The removal van in the film bears the name of a fictional firm, Pierce, which has been operating since 1941. The name is a nod to Jack Pierce, Universal's classic monster make-up artist during the studio's heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. The year 1941 refers to when Universal released the original The Wolf Man.
Leigh Whannell has said he drew inspiration from David Cronenberg's remake The Fly (1986) whilst devising his take on this classic werewolf tale. He pointed out that what set The Fly apart from many practical-effects horror films of that period was the way it used those effects to convey tragedy rather than comedy — it wasn't a joke, but a means of portraying someone succumbing to an illness. Whannell explained he wanted to capture that tone: it isn't about being funny, merely icky or gore-driven; it's about the tragedy of the human body falling apart. He also revealed that Julia Garner is "the emotional compass of this film," and that she will occupy the same function Shelley Duvall did in The Shining (1980) — you don't feel the fear in The Shining without Duvall — so he wanted someone able to absorb the audience's empathy, and he praised Garner for doing an incredible job.
Leigh Whannell and his wife were very close to a friend in Los Angeles who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as motor neurone disease or MND), a condition that gradually takes over the body. He explained "It is devastating when your body betrays you and begins to fail; for the person affected and those left behind it can feel like a real‑life horror film." After their friend’s death, Whannell channelled his grief into this film as a way of coming to terms with what had happened. "It was important to us to reflect something of that waking nightmare and to try to capture the fear Blake endures as he feels himself slipping away," Whannell says. "That is the most frightening part; people with these kinds of illnesses fight to hold on to some semblance of who they are."
It is the second picture in Blumhouse's 'Universal Monsterverse', following The Invisible Man (2020), which was also directed by Leigh Whannell. The film was originally intended as an instalment of Universal's 'Dark Universe', which began with The Mummy (2017), and was to include remakes of The Invisible Man (1933), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), The Wolf Man (1941) and Dracula (1931). After The Mummy proved a critical and box-office failure, subsequent projects were cancelled and the emphasis shifted to producing stronger standalone films on smaller budgets.
Originally, in 2021, Ryan Gosling was attached to star and Derek Cianfrance to direct the film — which would have been the third collaboration between Gosling and Cianfrance. Two years later both left the project (Gosling remained as an executive producer), and Leigh Whannell, who had previously departed before Gosling and Cianfrance's involvement, returned to the project as writer-director, with Christopher Abbott replacing Gosling in the lead role.
Leigh Whannell warned that not everyone will appreciate the way the Wolf Man appears, though those who do will be thrilled. In a recent interview with SFX Magazine, Whannell revealed the creature's design is entirely practical with no CGI involved. 'I think you have to bring a new approach,' Whannell said of his take on the Wolf Man. 'Perhaps some people won't like it because they love the traditional wolf too much, but that was the route I wanted to take.' Whannell went on to confirm his Wolf Man is '100 per cent practical, all make‑up — there are no CGI elements.' He did, however, point out that the practical costume and make‑up seen by fans at Universal Studios' 2024 Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando was not his work. 'Things slipped through the cracks, and it was like, "Oh, they're doing this promotion for Wolf Man at a theme park, but it doesn't look right",' he said. 'We shouldn't be putting that out into the world, because people are going to think that's what our wolf looks like. My only response is to say, "Look, that doesn't represent what we're doing." All I can do is wait for the film to be released. Then hopefully people will be like, "Oh, I see what they were doing."'
The name of Blake and Charlotte's daughter, Ginger, is a nod to the Ginger Snaps series.
Vocal distortion to convey Blake's diminishing ability to comprehend human speech was achieved by layering the dialogue over it in reverse.
The twist that the central Wolf-Man's father is also a werewolf — and, in fact, the one who infected him — is taken directly from the 2010 remake.
Leigh Whannell described how he imagined the werewolf's point-of-view sequences, saying he pictured the camera moving through a room until what once appeared as nonsense became intelligible, as if an invisible barrier had been crossed. He researched wolves — how they see, the colours of their eyes, and how animals perceive sound. He reflected on how we anthropomorphise our pets; he often has one-sided conversations with his dog, asking things like, 'What are you doing? Oh, you're upset — what about?' while the animal simply stares. Dogs pick up tone and perhaps recognise up to twenty words, he noted. Whannell felt this traditional Wolf Man tale lent itself to such an approach because transformations are usually sudden, so he wondered what would happen if it were slowed down and treated more like a degenerative illness — thinking in terms of a film such as 'Still Alice'.
According to Christopher Abbott, chewing on his prosthetic limbs wasn't so bad for the scenes where his character has to sink his teeth into a bloody arm and leg. "There's a lot of sugar in that blood stuff," Abbott told Mama's Geeky. "There's one scene ... where I'm gnawing on my leg. It was revolting but sort of tasty. The blood tastes sugary, and I swear to God, I think the bone bit was like white chocolate or something — something with white chocolate on it. I'm not saying I'd want it, but it wasn't horrible," he added.
The film was scheduled to hold its world premiere at the renowned TCL Chinese Theatre on 7 January, but the event was cancelled at the last minute because of the California wildfires.
Leigh Whannell said he drew inspiration from the grotesque metamorphoses in films like The Thing and The Fly, while make-up designer Arjen Tuiten remarks that what matters is the sight of characters caught between "two anatomies attempting to merge that don’t quite belong together, and it’s an agonising process." Whannell added that one reference point for both him and Tuiten was Heath Ledger’s iconic take on the Joker in The Dark Knight. "That’s an iconic character. Chris Nolan’s coming into this film," Whannell said. "There are so many different directions you can take the Joker, as we’ve seen. I felt he made a conscious choice to give people a Joker they hadn’t seen before. And it worked. So that was my question going in — ‘What do I do?’ I felt I couldn’t compete with Rick Baker and what he achieved on American Werewolf in London. What if I adopted more of a disease-like approach and treated it more like The Fly?"
Christopher Abbott spent hours watching animal clips on YouTube to study the wolf's body language. "There are distinct stages as the transformation occurs. Initially it may be about 80 per cent human and 20 per cent animal, and then that balance alters. So in order to follow how a human would react to something as opposed to an animal — a human responds one way if it feels unwell or frightened, whereas an animal acts differently, with all its subtle signs when it feels ill," he explained.
Blake gnawing off his own foot to free himself from a bear trap echoes Dr Lawrence Gordon’s forced amputation to escape in Saw (2004), which was also written by Leigh Whannell. The interior of the prosthetic leg was made of chocolate so that actor Christopher Abbott could eat his way through it.
The removal lorry had to be imported from the United States so it would be left-hand drive. The sequence in which the lorry goes over a cliff was mostly executed practically: the special effects team spent six days dismantling, lightening and reassembling it onto a bespoke support frame. A local fire ban, imposed because of a dry spell, meant the work had to be done without any welding, cutting or grinding.
Leigh Whannell and his wife, Corbett Tuck, co-wrote the film's first draft by drawing on the sense of confinement and isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to examine the inevitability of illness and death, by situating the story largely in a single location to keep the drama "intimate", and by exploring themes of parenthood and marriage.
Director Leigh Whannell said he aimed for his contemporary reimagining of the classic Universal Pictures monster to feel both recognisable and new. He said he didn't want to upset the many fans of the character and was negotiating a balancing act between not letting people down and avoiding a retread of the same story; ultimately, if he had to choose a direction he would opt for the more original path — the character has been revisited so often that he wanted to do something different.
Leigh Whannell: portrays Dan Kiel, heard on the radio at the start, conversing with Grady Lovell.
The wolfman refuses to stop stalking Blake and his family, pursuing them relentlessly — pacing outside the house and trying to get in. Early in the film, after taking a deer, the creature quickly withdrew back into the wilderness when it was confronted by Grady. That wolfman is Grady, and the house is likely his territory. From his point of view — and given how humans appear to someone afflicted by the condition — there are monsters in his house.
Principal photography commenced in March 2024 in Mangaroa, Upper Hutt, New Zealand.
Julia Garner said that the first time she saw Christopher Abbott in the "incredible" prosthetics, "I couldn't tear my eyes away from him. It felt so strange and uncanny — I remember thinking, 'Oh my God, this is terrifying.' After roughly three days, though, I grew accustomed to it." She added, "Actually, I find a more gradual transformation more frightening, because small traces of Chris remained recognisable. His skin and his hair were changing, but his eyes were still his. And I think if you want to make anything scarier, just use something familiar."
Shifts in lighting to alter perspectives were realised practically on set.
Christopher Abbott said that when he first saw himself in the mirror after the make-up, "I laughed immediately." "It's bonkers. You have your imagination, you read the script, and even after seeing the designs I thought I was ready, but the moment you see yourself in it, it's a surreal experience and it verges on the utterly ridiculous," he added. Julia Garner reacted to the prosthetics, saying, "It was terrifying, gross and at the same time utterly intriguing." "After three days I grew accustomed to it, but there was always some new detail in his face, the back of his head, his chest or elsewhere that I hadn't noticed before. I felt like I was discovering something new every day with that prosthetic," she said. Despite being covered in multiple layers of prosthetics, Abbott noted, "While the film is frightening," adding, "you always try to find some heart in it, some tragedy even in the later stages, the faint traces of the human, of the father, still there."
In one of the film's official posters, Matilda Firth's fingers are positioned so as to intentionally create a flawless "W."
A reinterpretation of the 1941 film "The Wolf Man".
Christopher Abbott admitted the prosthetics and filming process were not a pleasant experience. "They look beautiful, and I’m grateful we used real prosthetics — the film is all the better for it," he began. "But yes, it’s tedious and gruelling. It takes hours, and then you have to go and shoot. Simply wearing the prosthetics for so long is more exhausting than you’d expect. Some pieces are heavy and they weigh you down. Physically you feel slightly trapped, so it becomes a mental marathon as well." However, Abbott noted he could gauge his performance by how much prosthetic he was wearing, since the film was shot out of sequence. "I’d think, ‘Oh right — when I look like this I’m at that stage.’ So it was a team effort to keep track of those details," he shared. "The progression is very gradual in this film, so being able to play with how much he changes was really interesting. It begins with the fingers and then works its way up through the arms and the rest of the body. There was a lot to monitor, but it’s fun to experiment with physicality like that."
According to Leigh Whannell, the spider in the wardrobe was indeed real. "Oh yes, it was an Australian spider — we grew up around these. They don't actually occur in New Zealand; if you're someone who's afraid of creepy-crawlies, you'd do well to emigrate to New Zealand as quickly as possible because there are no snakes there. We had to bring it over from Australia to get a spider like that, and I can tell you it still gives me nightmares."
Julia Garner spoke with working mothers about the societal pressures faced by women and, after reading books about grief and loss, proposed that her character should undergo the seven stages of grief.
Christopher Abbott explained that Blake's transformation into the terrifying titular character renders the film as much a tragedy as a horror, with the theme of loss woven throughout the narrative. When asked about other performances that informed his approach, he cited The Fly, The Elephant Man and a touch of David Lynch, observing a tragic element common to those monster stories. He said it was one of his most anticipated horror films of 2025 and that it delivered; while it certainly provided scares and effective jump scares, he found the psychological torment and the emotional scenes — particularly the breakdown and the complete loss of communication between Blake and his wife and daughter — the most disturbing. That sense of tragedy in the monster's design was a key reason he wanted to make the film.
The film had its release on the 48th birthday of director Leigh Whannell.
In the 1941 and 2010 films Lawrence loses consciousness entirely and is unaware of what he does as a wolf. In this incarnation, while the illness appears to render Blake unable to express himself in English, he nonetheless seems to retain some awareness of his situation even as he grows more aggressive and bestial.
Reference to "Saw", another film by Leigh Whannell. When the beast's leg becomes trapped in a bear-trap and it chews off its own foot to break free, the shot of the foot lying on the floor in a pool of blood with the bear-trap still attached strongly evokes the ending of the first "Saw" film, which features the handcuffs.
During the film's opening, as Blake and Ginger stroll through the city centre, you can spot a Billy the Puppet sticker on a lamppost in the background. Billy the Puppet features in director Leigh Whannell's Saw franchise.
The application of prosthetics to Christopher Abbott required between two-and-a-half and seven-and-a-half hours, depending upon the stage of the transformation.
As Charlotte struggles to get Grady's old lorry started, the Wolf Man can be glimpsed briefly running past the window behind Blake, mere seconds before it emerges and attacks them.
Visual effects were used to convey the character's increasingly animalistic point of view, adding mist, CGI insects, translucent skin that revealed veins, and eyes that flashed with retro-reflective highlights.
At one point the back door is shut but the metal-grated door is left ajar. The Wolf Man hangs about the entrance and, when Blake comes too close, he grabs Blake's leg through the pet flap — the same flap for the household dog shown at the start of the film. The flap is so unobtrusive that even Blake has forgotten it. But the Wolf Man doesn't have any trouble finding it... because Grady knows his house.
Leigh Whannell drew up a catalogue of werewolf designs — ranging from Lon Chaney Jr.'s incarnation in the original The Wolf Man (1941) and David Naughton's in An American Werewolf in London (1981) to the creatures featured in The Howling (1981) and Dog Soldiers (2002) — before choosing one.
Shares notable similarities with Werewolf of London (1935), even though the setting and characters differ substantially. Both films depict a werewolf that keeps a largely human appearance, is still vulnerable to bullets, and retains a considerable degree of human intellect while growing more aggressive. Werewolf of London also suggests the transformation can become permanent if the werewolf does not kill a human.
During pre‑production, Leigh Whannell ran weekly film screenings for his crew in a theatre located within the studio where the film was being shot, showing titles such as The Shining (1980), The Thing (1982), The Fly (1986), Little Children (2006), Blue Valentine (2010), Amour (2012) and Under the Skin (2013). In 2024, Julia Garner, Sam Jaeger and Matilda Firth joined the cast.
Leigh Whannell has explained why a scene involving Blake's mother was removed from the finished film. The opening sequence establishes Blake's strained relationship with his father, Grady, when a young Blake encounters a werewolf while out hunting. By contrast, Blake's mother never appears on screen, her presence and fate left as a lingering, haunting absence throughout the story. Whannell said he co-wrote the film with his wife, although he usually works alone in a small, insular bubble in his office, and you can never be certain which themes audiences will pick up on, especially the subtler, more subtextual ones. He noted that Invisible Man felt like it was centred on a single issue — his guiding focus there was domestic abuse, stalking and gaslighting — whereas Wolf Man covers a number of themes. Written during the chaotic year of Covid and the lockdowns, he said he didn't try to constrain the film to one theme but instead poured in everything he was feeling about parenting, disease, illness and marriage, with him and Corbett layering those elements. He worried at times that it might feel thematically messy. Whannell then revealed a very personal influence behind the deleted scene: a close friend who suffered and eventually died from ALS. He described her decline as a slow-motion nightmare — she went from walking with a cane to being confined to a chair over the course of several years — and said that experience was on his mind as he sought to draw a link between what Blake endures and real-world illness. That was the reason the mother scene existed originally, but during editing you have to kill your darlings, and removing it was painful. He hopes audiences won't leave Wolf Man with a diminished sense of what the film is about because of that cut, and that viewers still understand it addresses illness, losing someone you love to disease and the inability to communicate with them — though he admitted the excised scene might have driven that theme home far more forcefully.
The prosthetic work on Christopher Abbott, overseen by Arjen Tuiten and a team of 25 artists, was executed in five distinct stages. Initially, hair and make-up designer Jane O'Kane applied transitional make-up to gradually make him appear paler; she first tanned the actor and then returned him to his normal skin tone to create a smooth shift. For the first stage Tuiten applied very thin cheek and forehead prosthetics, dental veneers showing infected gums, and a three‑quarter wig with receding hairlines to suggest the first signs of hair loss. In the basement sequence, where his wife is making the radio calls, Abbott urinates his trousers and displays a pockmarked change: an infected wound on his arm, the loss of a molar, hair being pulled from his head and his fingers visible on the bed. Stage two brought slightly heavier facial and hand prosthetics, additional dental pieces, contact lenses, subtle facial stubble, thinned wig work, a forehead appliance and small neck pieces. At this point, when he is on top of the greenhouse and inside the house, he begins to drift in and out and struggles to understand his wife and daughter. During stage three Blake’s teeth sharpen, his eyes alter, and his chest and hands develop further with heavier body, arm, hand and facial prosthetics; this phase also used fully animatronic replicas of Abbott’s head and hand to simulate bones and a jaw breaking beneath the skin. In stages four and five, as the transformation intensifies and the two anatomies begin to merge, Abbott required up to six hours in the make‑up chair for the more substantial prosthetics. Tuiten admitted he was initially concerned Christopher might not fully grasp what the daily process entailed, but praised Abbott for slipping into character as soon as he arrived on location and enduring those long sessions in a focused, almost monastic way; Tuiten insisted the actor needed to come to make‑up and work through it so the performance remained emotional rather than simply being concealed. That everything — including the animatronic head — was achieved in camera reflects the director’s old‑school approach. Tuiten noted that, because pre‑production was curtailed by actors’ and writers’ strikes, his build time was effectively halved, yet he believes this film stands apart from many recent productions, where creature changes are handled digitally, and he hopes audiences will recognise the achievement of creating 650 prosthetics with practical, in‑camera effects.
Benjamin Wallfisch, the composer, and editor Andy Canny — both of whom worked on The Invisible Man — returned for Wolf Man. As with The Invisible Man, the score was recorded at AIR Studios in London. For the closing piece, "Goodbye", which accompanies the film's final sequence, Whannell asked Wallfisch, who had originally written "something kind of spare and haunting" for the scene, to create a track that would let the film finish on a "big emotional note", taking its cue from the finale, "Denouement", on The Invisible Man soundtrack.
As the Lovell family travel to Blake's childhood home, their car winds along the wooded mountain roads in an aerial shot that evokes the opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining (1980).
Leigh Whannell once again teamed up with director of photography Stefan Duscio for their third collaboration following Upgrade and The Invisible Man, taking influence from cinematographer Roger Deakins' "grounded approach" in Prisoners (2013) and Sicario (2015).
A 50-foot Technocrane was utilised for the greenhouse sequence.
Julia Garner said the film draws more of its terror from making the transformation from man to wolf a gradual part of the journey. "It's more frightening when it is a slower transition because I could still recognise little elements of Chris," Garner said. "His skin and his hair were changing, but he still had his eyes and I think if you want to make anything scarier you should use something familiar. That's why they always put dolls in horror films — you see a doll almost every day. So I think this 'Wolf Man' is almost more frightening for that reason; there's something recognisable, that Charlotte still sees her husband, but he is no longer there."
Leigh Whannell was a fan of Christopher Abbott, particularly for his stage performance opposite Aubrey Plaza in the 2023 production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.
Apart from a brief sequence in San Francisco, the whole film is set in and around an old farmhouse in the Oregon wilderness.
The most crucial death wasn't finalised until the day before it was shot. Several options were weighed right up to the last minute, Ben Prendergast has said. Prendergast even stated "I had access to the full script and access to the director" to shape his portrayal, but where Grady "ended up, we were not sure of that until a day before we shot it." Given how central the character was to the story, his demise "had to be worthy, it had to be something that Blake and Charlotte's character could earn." From the outset the filmmakers knew there would be a fight, Prendergast added, yet "a lot of it wasn't set in stone." They planned a confrontation that would finish in a particular way, but the precise details remained undecided. "We had this fight scene, they'd be filming it, but even [Director Leigh Whannell] was scratching his chin like 'I'll come back to you and we'll work it out.'" One initial idea was to film an epic sequence in a single continuous take. "We had choreographed that fight scene to five minutes and it was wild," the actor laughed. "We were exhausted rehearsing it." A major issue with that approach surfaced early on. "In a death scene, how do you not move after you've just been so physical?" After five straight minutes of gruelling action, it would have been almost impossible for Prendergast to suddenly stop gasping. In the end that long one-shot was abandoned. Once they moved away from the lengthy continuous take, the question became exactly how Grady should be dispatched. The crew tried numerous variations. "We did so many takes," Prendergast recalled. In one version Blake "literally UFC choked him out, crushing his neck." In another, Charlotte intervened, driving a hot poker into Grady's chest. There were also takes where Charlotte smashed a bottle over his head and a host of other ideas they attempted, though options were limited because the characters can mainly slash and bite. Blake didn't have as much use of his hands. Choking didn't cut it — it wasn't violent enough, and they needed to humble Grady during the fight. By far the most brutal suggestion was a tag-team execution, Prendergast revealed. "Another one was stabbing [the hot poker] through [Grady's] neck. Blake then grabbed onto one side and Charlotte grabbed the other, then they ripped his head off." Ultimately the film settled on his throat being ripped open.
Like this film, Dog Soldiers (2002) also centres on a group of characters holed up in an isolated farmhouse as werewolves attempt to break in. Like Leigh Whannel's film, Dog Soldiers eventually reveals that the werewolves are secretly related to one another, and that they regard the safehouse/farmhouse as their own territory, living there in their human forms. However, that twist carries considerably more emotional weight in this film's storyline.
When Charlotte is trying to get the old pickup truck to start, a member of the film's crew can be faintly seen through the dirty windows behind Blake. This turned out to be a fortunate accident. According to director Leigh Whannell, "a crew member walked into the background of the shot and we decided to keep it in the film. It ought to have been a mistake, but we left it in — I thought, 'That will scare the hell out of the audience!' These mistakes do happen."
During his transformation, Blake's vision shifts to depend more on thermal cues, much like the titular antagonist in the 1987 science-fiction horror film 'Predator'.
Leigh Whannell brought prosthetics artist Arjen Tuiten on board to achieve a subtle, practical-effects look. Using soft silicone appliances, several contact lenses and false canine teeth, the make-up charts Blake's slow slide into something more beastly. Tuiten recalled meeting the director: "When I first met Leigh, he talked about being confined during the Covid lockdown and seeing the transformation as an infection. He wanted it rooted in reality, the rawness of it, how it would play out today with a bewildered man in the woods, where this piece of folklore began." Tuiten, who borrowed Jack Pierce's makeup case from the living legend Rick Baker to keep close, rewatched The Fly (1986) as a reference. Much like Jeff Goldblum's Brundlefly, Blake appears slightly different with each onscreen appearance. "It's a slow progression," Tuiten explained. "Once it takes hold, there's no turning back. Leigh was very keen that everything be done in-camera — every make-up look, every prosthetic." Yet they were careful never to lose sight of Blake's humanity. "So we met, he described what he wanted, and I followed my gut," Tuiten continued. "I modelled a 30-and-a-half-foot-long sculpt of Blake on the floor, slumped against a wall — quite sad and tragic, showing him losing his family while they lose their father. I sent it to Leigh one night, and by the next morning he had emailed me: 'You absolutely nailed it.'"
The sequence where Blake claws at his bloodied arm got under director Leigh Whannell's skin. He said: "That scratch made me feel sick. I'd never experienced that before. I've worked on the Saw films and done plenty of grisly material, but never once have I made myself feel ill. The first time I watched it in the editing suite, I couldn't bear to look. I've got used to it now, but while he was scratching I had to look away. I told Andy Canny, the editor, 'I've hit rock bottom. I can't even watch my own film.' He added, "you know you've reached a new low — or perhaps a high — when you can make yourself feel sick."
Although the film is unmistakably about werewolves, the word "werewolf" is never uttered at any point.
Both The Monster (2016) and this film contain a scene in which characters are left dangling inside an overturned car while a creature lurks beneath them at the roadside.
Both this film and Silver Bullet (1985) include scenes in which a werewolf forces the protagonist off the road. The difference is that in Silver Bullet the werewolf's human guise is driving towards Marty, whereas in this film the creature itself leaps out in front of the vehicle. Marty manages to escape his assailant, while Blake ends up crashing his vehicle.
Leigh Whannell couldn't find anywhere in New Zealand that resembled a traditional American farmhouse, so the production team had one built from the ground up on a vacant plot beside a pine plantation.
Leigh Whannell was intrigued by the idea of a subjective wolf transformation, knowing that the dramatic change in American Werewolf in London is virtually unbeatable. "Rather than the moon comes out and Chris changes into a wolf, which we've seen done brilliantly — most brilliantly, I believe, in American Werewolf in London, so I would slow down the transformation" — as Chris begins to shift, the colours gradually change and the sound subtly alters. For the final transformation later in the film, Whannell deliberately attempted the opposite of Rick Baker's approach: instead of a huge, overt metamorphosis he pursued a more understated effect, utilising practical effects wherever possible.
There was debate over how much hair the Wolf Man should have. Leigh Whannell and special make-up effects designer Arjen Tuiten believed they needed to do something different, not like the Wolf Man audiences had seen previously. "You might upset some people if you do that, but you have to do it," he added.
The film's opening sequence, in which ants besiege a wasp, proved to be a challenge both logistically and practically. Director Leigh Whannell explained, "Getting control of insects is really difficult — we even had to bring an insect wrangler in from New Zealand. The ants are attacking the wasp, but the wasp has to survive; you have to let it go. It was definitely one of those shots you have to battle to achieve in a film." Whannell said he was inspired by the opening of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, adding, "I wanted to establish an undercurrent of the animal world and the mercilessness of nature."
When director Leigh Whannell first came up with the idea of the camera shifting between two worlds — showing events from Blake's viewpoint and from his wife's — that was the spark that made him say "I think I want to make this film." The wolf vision that conveys Blake's perspective as he transforms was achieved mostly in-camera rather than with CGI. Whannell explained, "When you see the lights change here, that's happening in-camera. They're actually changing the lights with dials. Not all of it; obviously, there's a bit of CGI — you can see her eyes light up and these tiny particles floating in the air. So there is a small element of CGI, clearly, but a large part was done in-camera as well. It was fun to try things practically on set; it really energises the crew to do effects in-camera."
From set design and costumes to genuine wildlife, an animal motif recurs throughout the film. "When I was making this film I was thinking about animals, and you'll notice recurring animal references across the production design," Whannell explains. "Look at Matilda's hoodie — it has those little ears. It was created specifically for the film; we didn't find one ready-made. The costume department stitched it for us. You will keep seeing these animal references, hopefully woven into the very fabric of the film." For the scene in which Blake discovers a spider in the farmhouse, a huntsman spider had to be imported from Australia because New Zealand does not have spiders of that kind; they do not spin webs but hunt for their prey, which is how they earned their name.
