Werewolf (Wilkolak)

WEREWOLF (WILKOLAK) - EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT

Adrian Panek's Wilkołak — or known to Western audiences as Werewolf — is a dark, gruesome and compelling horror. Panek's film follows a group of young polish children liberated from the evil of a Nazi concentration camp by Russian soldiers, only to find themselves embroiled in a Lord of the Flies fight for power. With lurking beats lusting for flesh swarming around them, they are trapped in an abandoned house with no food or water. 

Writer-director Adrian Panek framing Werewolf in war-torn 1945 Poland is one that is in no way exploitative of the holocaust but, in fact, an eye-opening, raw account of the aftermath of such an event. By placing the story in this specific time frame, with the trauma befallen to these young characters, what is created is a profoundly compelling underbelly of social climatisation at an underdeveloped age in perhaps one the most horrifying and terrifying period in human history.

The result is this tremendous weighted subtext of how a generation was plagued with a life they both never were able to live and were forced to endure, shown in a mesmerising character study. Equally as tremendous performances that echo the eerie sentiment of emotional brainwashing in coping and dismembering this deep physical and psychological wound — specifically to alienate an enemy — are also explored.

This subtext is subtle and a nuance that compliments the more on-the-nose horror elements. While the most inferior aspect of the film, it does thrill in the occasion but uses effective spills of blood and guts. Nevertheless, the horror is intertwined and woven in such a way in that it has meaning and depth. Each confrontation has a point, an effective use within the story, that not only reinforces the sentiment of Werewolf never being exploitative but reminding and reaffirming the depth and gravitas of its narrative.

Werewolf (Wilkolak) is released August 20th 2019