Will Randall, editor-in-chief of a large New York publishing house, drives along a Vermont country road and, in a moment of mercy, stops to help a large black wolf before tragedy strikes—he is bitten in the struggle. (Will Randall, played by Jack Nicholson.) Days later, a power shift rocks the company as tycoon Raymond Alden announces his takeover. The aging and ailing Will accepts a demotion, while his unscrupulous protégé Stewart Swinton, James Spader, is installed in his former role. Will then crosses paths with Alden’s headstrong daughter Laura Alden, Michelle Pfeiffer, whose charm and intelligence quickly draw him in, setting the stage for a charge of new possibilities amid old insecurities.
As the deal closes, Will notices a remarkable surge in his vitality and a sharpening of his senses. He grows increasingly suspicious that his wife Charlotte Randall, Kate Nelligan, and Swinton are having an affair, a conclusion he reaches after catching a whiff of Swinton’s scent on Charlotte’s clothing. His hunch is confirmed in a tense confrontation when he unexpectedly surprises them together in Swinton’s apartment, an incident that leaves him both furious and deeply unsettled.
A volatile, unfolding romance takes shape as Will enters into a relationship with Laura and spends a night at the Aldens’ villa, where a fainting spell gives way to a startling transformation. He awakens in a transformed state and brutalizes a deer in the estate’s park, later discovering he is bloodied and disoriented. He seeks help from pagan expert Dr. Vijay Alezais, Om Puri, who explains that Will is undergoing a metamorphosis into a wolf. The doctor provides an amulet intended to slow or halt the full transformation, a talisman that Will clings to as danger grows.
That night, during another shift, Will breaks into a zoo, steels handcuffs from a policeman, and evades capture while unleashing a brutal assault on a group of muggers. He awakens the next morning back in a hotel room with no memory of the night before, a clue that his condition is more than a frightful dream. As the pressure mounts, Will orchestrates a mutiny among the writers at the publishing house to demand his continued leadership. Alden agrees, and Will’s first act in this new arrangement is to fire Stewart Swinton, a gesture that he enacts with a mix of triumph and lingering unease, even quipping about marking his territory in the bathroom after a moment of strange ritual.
The plot thickens when Will discovers a severed finger in his handkerchief, a grim reminder that someone was harmed, or worse. He cuffs himself to his hotel radiator to keep from acting on impulse, but Laura arrives and calms him, and the two share a night together. Yet Will cannot fully control his night wanderings, and he eventually roams Central Park, still half-transformed. Detective Carl Bridger, Richard Jenkins, informs Will the next morning that Charlotte’s body has been found in Central Park, with canine DNA present at the scene.
That evening, Laura takes action to protect herself and Will: she locks him in a horse stable at his request and heads to the police station to provide a statement. There, she encounters Swinton, who is behaving with brutish aggression and even sporting eerily golden eyes. Laura quietly makes arrangements to leave the country with Will, while Swinton intensifies his pursuit by invading the Alden estate and murdering two guards. When he attempts to rape Laura, Will discards the amulet and engages in a brutal confrontation, mauling Swinton in a savage display of strength. Laura seizes a dead guard’s gun and finishes off Swinton herself, while Will—still in a half-human state—shares a brief, charged moment with Laura before vanishing into the New England woods.
In the aftermath, Bridger is left to witness Laura’s escalating awareness of her own senses, a sign that the transformation is not solely Will’s. As the forest darkens, Will howls for Laura, a haunting call that echoes through the trees, and Laura’s eyes begin to mirror Will’s and Swinton’s animalistic change. The film closes on this intensified bond between the two, a note of unresolved longing and a possible future where humanity and animal instinct blur into one continuous, primal thread.
