Since the two movies share a director, it is reasonable for viewers to wonder whether 2020’s The Invisible Man and 2025’s Wolf Man are canonically linked. 2025’s Wolf Man reboot sees Poor Things supporting star Christopher Abbott play Blake, an unfortunate father who has a run-in with a werewolf after moving into his childhood home with his wife and daughter. A reboot of 1941’s The Wolf Man, 2025’s Wolf Man is a straightforward contemporary horror retelling of the iconic story and the latest addition to Universal’s complex, ever-shifting Dark Universe project.
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Beginning with Tom Cruise’s 2017 flop The Mummy, the Dark Universe was intended to be a series of Universal movie reboots that built a fictional universe around the studio’s iconic movie monsters. The Mummy was set to be followed by a Frankenstein reboot starring Javier Bardem, a Bride of Frankenstein movie starring Angelina Jolie, and Elizabeth Banks’ take on The Invisible Woman. When The Mummy flopped, the Dark Universe plans were altered and the studio began focusing on standalone, lower-budget horror reboots like 2020’s The Invisible Man. This psychological horror was a critically acclaimed hit upon release.
2025’s Wolf Man Is Not Directly Connected To 2020’s The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man And The Wolf Man Don’t Share The Same Fictional Universe
Although 2025’s Wolf Man shares the same tone and style as The Invisible Man since it is a dark psychological horror that re-imagines a classic Universal monster movie, 2025’s Wolf Man and 2020’s The Invisible Man are not canonically connected. They are both remakes of Universal Monster movies, but they do not exist in the same universe. Instead, Wolf Man is intended to be viewed as a standalone horror movie with no links to earlier releases, including existing Dark Universe movies. This approach was best explained by Wolf Man producer producer Ken Kao in a ScreenRant interview.
Wolf Man centers on the body horror of the main character’s transformation, whereas The Invisible Man focuses on the heroine’s isolation as she is pursued by her abusive ex.
Kao explained that Wolf Man’s connection to the rest of the Dark Universe was “More like the Joker approach” than the MCU, implying that the movies existed in their own distinct fictional universes. Moreover, there are not as many similarities between the two as there initially appear to be. Although both are contemporary psychological horror movies, Wolf Man centers on the body horror of the main character’s transformation, whereas The Invisible Man focuses on the heroine’s isolation as she is pursued by her abusive ex. Thus, the two movies have different thematic preoccupations and approaches to their stories.
Wolf Man Does Have A Connection To The Invisible Man
Saw Writer Leigh Whannell Directed Both The Invisible Man And The Wolf Man
That said, there are many reasons viewers might assume The Invisible Man and Wolf Man are linked. The two movies are both from Universal/Blumhouse, and both are directed by Saw screenwriter Leigh Whannell. As such, the two movies have some stylistic similarities, from their grey and blue color palettes to their dour, bleak tones. However, The Invisible Man’s titular threat is an external force, whereas Wolf Man’s central tragedy is the protagonist himself becoming a monster. As such, Wolf Man and The Invisible Man have very different stories, even if both do see Whannell tackle themes of masculinity in horror.
Was The Lack Of Connection Disappointing To Fans?
Most Fans Have Moved On From The Idea Of A Shared Universe
While it was a nice thought to know that a Dark Universe was coming with monsters existing in the same world, it seems that by the time Wolf Man arrived in 2025, most fans had moved on and didn’t really care anymore. In a Reddit thread, fans responded to Wolf Man being a standalone film with a shrug. One Redditor posted, “As fun as a universal cinematic universe would be, remember that House of Frankenstein/Dracula were both pretty terrible movies. It’d be very difficult to actually get all these monsters in a movie and have it done well.“
However, some fans see a connection between the two movies, which makes discussing them side-by-side even more interesting. According to another Reddit thread, neither movie is about monsters; rather, they are allegories for something deeper, giving them a loose connection:
“Invisible Man didn’t spend much time with the monster at all. It was a feminist tale exploring toxic masculinity from the point of view of a woman who was being stalked by a man who wanted to control her… Just like the invisible man, it explores toxic masculinity. But instead of a hateful controlling monster, the monster here is the one that lives inside every man.
Hidden deep down inside even the most loving and caring of them. These fathers are so afraid that something out there will hurt their families that they end up becoming the monster themselves.”
Invisible Man Connects To A Different Leigh Whanell Movie
There Are Connections To The Sci-Fi Thriller Upgrade
While The Invisible Man and Wolf Man had no connections, and the Dark Universe franchise seems dead. there is another movie that connects to The Invisible Man in some wild ways. That movie is Upgrade. In that film, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is a technophobe and mechanic who lives in the year 2046, where it seems most people have technological enhancements. When Grey and his wife Asha are in an accident in their self-driving car, they escape with injuries only to have four men gun them down.
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Asha dies, while Grey becomes a quadriplegic. A brilliant tech scientist eventually gives him back control of his body with an AI chip called STEM. Grey then develops powers similar to those of the Marvel character Venom, but the AI takes control when it happens. Asha worked for a company called Cobalt, which specialized in human-computer augmentation. Adrian, the villain from The Invisible Man, was the CEO of Cobalt, the same company Asha worked for in the future, trying the movie’s worlds together.
Source: ScreenRant
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