FAQ

He was wearing the amulet. He only transformed once he took it off.

No. This is not possible and doesn't make sense.

Will Randall (Jack Nicholson), the mild-mannered and aging editor-in-chief of McCleesh Publishing House, is bitten by a wolf on his way home from a business trip in Vermont. When Will learns that, due to a takeover by billionaire Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer), he's been transferred from the New York office to Eastern Europe, that his job has been given to his protege Stewart Swinton (James Spader), and that Stewart has been sleeping with his wife Charlotte (Kate Nelligan), Will begins to assume the aggressive behaviors of a wolf and to plot revenge against those who have wronged him. Along the way, Will finds himself strongly attracted to Alden's wild-spirited daughter Laura (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is also finding herself increasingly attracted to Will as he changes ...until she learns the real reason for his change.

Wolf is based on a screenplay co-written by American author Jim Harrison and American screenwriter Wesley Strick.

Although the word "werewolf" is never used in the movie, it is strongly implied that the wolf who bit Will was, indeed, a werewolf of some type. However, in a visit to Indian healer, Dr. Vijay Alezais (Om Puri), Will is told that, to turn into a "demon wolf", the wolf "analog" must already be within the individual, so some viewers have suggested that even a bite from a real wolf might have been sufficient to activate the analog. In fact, Alezais also points out that just the passion of the wolf, without even the bite, can sometimes be enough to activate the analog. Another possibility is that it had to do with the timing. Alezais notes that Will was bitten on March 8th, a day that the moon was closer to the earth than it has been in the past 100 years.

After talking with Stewart at the police station and realizing what he has become, Laura rushes back to the barn where Will has had himself locked in a stall. When Stewart realizes that Laura has left the station, he goes after her, breaking down the estate barricade and killing the gatekeeper in the process. Stewart attacks Laura in the barn, just outside of Will's locked stall, and tries to rape her. Will attempts to escape the cage but cannot. In desperation, Will rips off the amulet given to him by Dr Alezais and allows his further transformation. Getting back his wolfen abilities, Will finally leaps 20 feet into the air over the top of the stall and, as he and Stewart continue to transform, Will fights off Stewart until Laura finally disposes of Stewart by firing several bullets into him. Unfortunately, Will's transformation has gone too far, and there is no turning back. He bids Laura goodbye and runs off to join the wolf pack. Several hours later, after Raymond has returned home, discovered the body of the gatekeeper, and called in the police, Laura emerges from her cottage claiming not to have witnessed anything except for some shots being fired. As she walks away, she mentions to the detective that she can tell he had a vodka tonic and can smell it a mile away. In the final scene, a yellow-eyed wolf howls and Laura's eyes glow in the same yellow way that Will's eyes glowed, as well as the eyes of the wolf that bit him.

At the end of the movie, Laura was clearly becoming a wolf herself although she is never shown being specifically bitten. Some have suggested that she was bitten by either Stewart (when he tried to rape her) or by Will (when they had sex) or even that having sex with Will transferred the demon wolf to her via their shared fluids. It is also possible that Laura was one of those exceptional persons who already possessed the wolf analog and whose passion was strong enough to bring it out without being bitten at all (as described by Dr Alezais earlier in the movie).