WEREWOLF (AKA WILKOLAK) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ADRIAN PANEK / STARRING: KAMIL POLSINAK, NICHOLAS PRZYGODA, SONIA MIETELICA / RELEASE DATE: 30TH AUGUST
In 1945, the last days of a Polish forced labour camp sees a final rush of brutality where Nazi guards, knowing that liberation and defeat are coming at any minute, cruelly kill the remaining prisoners, even setting the camp dogs on some of them. Only a handful of children survive.
Deposited in an isolated and once-grand palace with its once-grand owner who now lives off rationed potatoes, the children begin a slow process of remembering what being human is, so degraded and fearful have their young lives been for so long.
But things take a turn for the worse when the children are abandoned by the adult world and left to their own devices once the house is surrounded by the prison camp dogs, now feral, starving and in need of meat. Trapped with no adults, no water and nothing to eat, how will the children get through this when, even amongst themselves, there are prejudices and rivalries which threaten to unravel the survival they’ve only just been granted?
More of a film about horror than a horror film, despite the effective use of the genre’s tropes, Werewolf is allegory treading a dangerous line. It’s a brave or foolish writer / director (Adrian Panek) who takes the holocaust as a starting point and makes the monsters animals, given what has happened at the hands of human beings prior to this story’s beginning. It could be seen as trite. But it isn’t. It’s the whole point.
If a werewolf is a human in monstrous form, that’s something these children have seen too much of already. So far, so allegorical. But what makes this story so fascinating is that, given all that we know they’ve been through already, and watching their humanity slowly return, we’re rooting for these youngsters to survive without being forced to see the attacking dogs who are trying to kill them purely as the monsters.
Much like the kids, they’re just hungry, themselves victims of man’s atrocities. In the camps, they were trained to attack a certain type of person and it’s vital to whether or not the children will work together to liberate themselves that such prejudices are overcome.
It’s often shot like a horror, and beautifully so – moonlit misty woods, long dark corridors leading to something ghastly. The young cast of mainly non-professionals is absolutely wonderful, eliciting sympathy and dread with their strong performances and haunted expressions.
Ultimately, their survival or otherwise depends on their humanity, their ability to reject the cruelty they’ve been subjected to and allow compassion, forgiveness and mercy to dictate their actions. Because, in Werewolf, it really is the adults who are the monsters.
