At his best, Shawn Levy lets actors supply the feeling without fuss. We like his warmth and comic timing; the trouble comes when a film needs him to interrupt the jokes or give its action some shape.
Fi1m perspective
For a moment in Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), Shawn Levy stops the jokes and leaves the camera on Hugh Jackman’s face. There is no music to help, and Jackman has time to finish speaking. We were moved more than we expected, because Levy allowed a performance to matter in a film so busy congratulating itself. The film around that pause is only intermittently funny and often tiring.
Levy moved from the family comedies Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) and Night at the Museum (2006) into action with Real Steel (2011). The recurring interests remained family, damaged relationships and the possibility of putting things right. The action comedy Free Guy (2021) began his major collaboration with Ryan Reynolds. He adapts his visual style to the story rather than insisting on a recognisable look of his own, a useful quality when working within somebody else’s series.
Stranger Things (2016) gives us firmer grounds for recommending him, provided the credit is shared. Working within Matt and Ross Duffer’s series, Levy is one of eight credited directors, and the look and pace stay consistent as the episodes change hands. The first eight episodes build a small-town horror story around children who can act and Winona Ryder’s unrestrained commitment. The later expansion sometimes strains that story, but we would not pin the increasingly elaborate mysteries on one director.
Deadpool & Wolverine exposes the limits of that adaptability, particularly when Levy has a crowd fight to stage. Production designer Ray Chan gives its wasteland wrecked cars and a half-buried studio logo, while cinematographer George Richmond’s overcast grey lighting leaves the costumes to provide the colour. Levy sends lines of extras running at each other, with little interest in how the fights might develop. Rob Simonsen’s score is largely a rumble beneath the songs, doing little to give the action momentum. For a steadier evening, start with the first eight episodes of Stranger Things.
Biography
Shawn Levy is a Canadian filmmaker, director, writer and producer. Born on 23 July 1968 in Montreal, Quebec, he graduated from Yale University and received an MFA from the University of Southern California. He is the founder of 21 Laps Entertainment.
Levy directed episodes of the Netflix series Stranger Things (2016–) and the films Night at the Museum (2006), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014). He directed, co-wrote and produced Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), and has produced The Boogeyman (2023) and the forthcoming Backrooms (2026).
