On any Friday night the atmosphere at HOME is second to none, and tonight was no exception; The bar was packed with revellers, the busy restaurant emitted tempting aromas which threatened to dash my diet on its culinary rocks and scores of punters bustled from the ticket desk to the various theatre spaces and cinemas. It seemed like this venue was the epicentre of Manchester’s culture. I passed the long queue for Joker (sorry, did I just yawn?) and found myself in the comfortable surroundings of cinema 4 with a handful of other patrons who were also demonstrating better taste… though I take no credit for my choice beyond the 4-line blurb provided by HOME’s website.
As HOME put it, Werewolf (Panek, A. 2018) is set in 1945. When “children who have been liberated from a Nazi concentration camp are left abandoned without food or water. However, the nightmare continues when they are besieged by wild dogs that were used to guard the camp. Under the cover of a genre film, a deeper psychological story unfolds.” This intriguing premise is apt, but does not do the film justice.
Panek’s second feature film begins in Gross-Rosen, a Nazi concentration camp in the midst of a chaotic retreat. The opening few minutes are filled with images of cruelty, senseless violence and are frankly harrowing. Children are shot, shepherd dogs rip victims to shreds and jackboots murder those not fit enough to keep up with an exercise drill. The scene positions us with Wladek, a young teenager who watches the slaughter with intrigue, before mimicking the Nazi officers in an effort to appease them when faced with his own execution. The scene is such a shock to the system that I was about to confuse it with exploitation and huffily dismiss it as offensive but Panek thankfully pulls back at exactly the right moment.
As the liberated children are temporarily housed in an abandoned chateau, we discover that some are feral, some are violently unhinged and all are desperate with thirst and on the brink of starvation. The premise for a 'Lord Of The Flies' style psychological thriller is set, and indeed when a knife menacingly changes hands in the dead of night, child-on-child murder is a plot-twist that you’d bet your house on. However, it is the arrival of a pack of german shepherd dogs, also abandoned after the liberation, that really ups the ante; as they tear at their screaming victims with the blood-spattered frenzy of a masked slasher director Panek tips his hand. The abandoned house, the shadowy interiors and monsters scratching at the door. This is a horror movie – and it’s as scary as hell!
Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz’s score is full of insidious dread, whilst cinematographer Dominik Danilczyk’s camera prowls through every space as though we too were predatory dogs, stalking our prey hungrily. Each scene is wound tightly with dramatic tension as even when the dogs are secondary afterthoughts, the development of Wladek’s character is chillingly revealed. The young actor Kamil Polnisiak is an unnerving presence, with a blank de-humanised expression that is reminiscent of Aleksey Kravchenko’s performance as the child protagonist in the equally harrowing Russian war epic ‘Come And See’ (Klimov, E. 1985). Wladek’s identification with his Nazi abusers is played off against the equally traumatised Hanys, whose violent temper and righteous anger could also be what finally destroys the children’s sanctuary.
The film is so effective at keeping you in the grip of fear, whilst also producing sensory attacks which leave you a nervous, gibbering wreck that one scene in which a boy is sent into a room to kill off an isolated dog left me whimpering like the terrorised children I was watching. However, a scene in which a child enters an abandoned bunker evoked the Murnau 1922 horror blueprint ‘Nosferatu’, particularly through the iconography of archways, that I was reminded that director Adrian Panek is doing so much more than effective thrills. Somehow this film, like the post WW1 expressionist movement which informed many of the tropes of modern horror, is dealing with the trauma of war, its nihilistic effects on those that endured it and how out of the ashes of one regime, authoritarianism re-emerges with a new, equally sinister face.
As I passed Cinema 1, still packed with comic-book villain fans, I couldn’t help but feel that the joke was on them. Panek’s film is a gruelling 90 minutes which never lets you out of its grip. It deftly weaves horror tropes through its prowling monsters, with more challenging historical themes through its prowling proto-monsters Wladek and Hanys. It derives such visceral terror from the domestic dog, that I returned home slightly more trepidatious about Fr Dougal, my West Highland terrier who I now suspect is a murderous killing-machine. Werewolf is undoubtedly the best thing screening at HOME this week and as you arrive at the auditorium, please pause to inhale as much air as you can because you’re about to hold your breath until the end credits roll.
Reviewer - Ben Hassouna-Smith
on - 4/10/19
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