Wolfkin

At the start a couple makes love outdoors. As soon as they're done the dude realizes she's knocked up and runs off into the forest. As you do. Based on the woman's hairstyle and fuzzy pits I thought this scene was set in the 1700s. But actually it's in 2012 and the woman is just bad at personal hygiene. Anyway, 10 years later she's the single mom to a bratty kid who keeps biting his classmates. When Mommy's Little Mistake finally gets suspended from school she tracks down her baby daddy's parents who own half of Luxembourg. Why she didn't seek child support from them for her stupid kid earlier is anyone's guess. Anyway Grandpa Joe is a werewolf or something. More importantly, who cares? This stupid tedious movie is stupid and tedious.

In WOLFKIN, single working mom, Elaine (Louise Maneau) is trying her best to raise her son, Martin, who has certain... difficulties. He's been attacking his schoolmates, even causing serious injuries. At her wits end, Elaine decides to take Martin to the country vineyards of his paternal grandparents. It doesn't take long for her to notice that the customs and traditions are very different on this palatial estate, and things get pretty bizarre, even threatening. Fearing for Martin and herself, Elaine takes Martin back home.

That's when the terror really begins.

While there is some social commentary here, it doesn't become preachy, or otherwise keep this from being a solid genre effort. This is a unique take on the subject matter, using lychanthropy in some intriguing ways.

Well worth viewing, in spite of a rather abrupt ending, and some questionable CGI...

This film is layered.

The first layer is the individual drama: a mother struggles to manage a child with a potentially lethal deformity, both for himself and for others.

The second layer is the social conflict: the child belongs to a noble and wealthy lineage, which has codes that the mother does not understand and initially rejects (hunting, the separation of rights and duties between men and women, religiosity).

But pushing the metaphor even further, Molitor reveals the third layer, which is political: lycanthropy as an expression of the impulse driving right-wing politics: the theory of "homo homini lupus"; Darwinian selection; the Church not as an expression of Christ's message, but as a façade of "respectability" for a closed and conservative community; and finally, capitalism as an expression of "feeding on one's own kind."

Without this third level of interpretation, the seemingly insignificant scene of hunting migrants would lose all its expressive power.

The film is extremely ambitious. Here, horror serves a content that transcends its boundaries. It is a true artistic endeavour, which does not forgo maintaining the narrative integrity of the three layers, making the first level of engagement enjoyable as well.

One of the most intriguing horrors of recent years.

Trying to raise her son alone, a single mother grows alarmed at the repeated accusations that he's biting people and takes him away to his father's parent's house in the countryside to raise him, but their clashing values make it difficult for her to believe what he's becoming while staying there.

This was an intriguing if ultimately flawed genre effort. One of the better elements here is the highly effective and intriguing setup that plays out with several prominent elements coming together. The general gist of the film is the coming-of-age story, albeit one with the protagonist not being human but rather a werewolf thanks to his father, but instead of taking a more linear path through this setup, it turns more into a clashing set of ideals between old-world values and modern ones. That the grandparents, with their stately and stoic response to everything happening and are ready to dole out whatever is needed to ensure the situation goes smoothly without any hiccups, tend to be the ones who've got the right idea on how to handle his treatment the more time they spend there leads a lot of credence to their system and creating conflict as a result. This ends up creating a genuinely enjoyable final half where the action picks up and provides some rather intriguing concepts to come about due to it letting this play out, making for some intriguing features here. There are some big issues here keeping this one down. One of the main instances here is the films' use repeated usage of stupidity regarding the various subplots simply as a means of making the storyline work. The mother's refusal to acknowledge help of any kind regarding her son, who's been shown on multiple occasions to get into incidents of biting people his own age, emerges from the whole affair without bringing the authorities onto the scene or any other kind of repercussions that instead enable her to get away to the parents' house where even more unnatural behavior occurs. Numerous mentions are made of how they never knew of the son's presence or of their impending visit yet is taken in and made a member of the family with little explanation or discussion should set off plenty of alarms as to what's going on as there not being any connection between them until this point, so it simply comes off as a means of furthering the storyline with contrivance rather than anything. The other downside to this one is the rather measured and low-key approach taken here which keeps everything at a reserved tempo and pace. Not so much relying on grandiose action, elaborate special effects, or genuine horror scenes to tell the story here as it's much more about the grandparents' secretive behavior and methods that are pushing everything along leaves the film with quite a lot of extreme dialogue-heavy scenarios that might not be as eventful or exciting to most viewers out there. The main change that occurs nearly fifty minutes into the film is the first such instance of that happening throughout the film which is far too long for this one to go along without more happening here as this just leaves the film with way too many instances of nothing horrific happening for long stretches of the running time. This is also due to the film having way too many subplots for what it's trying to do and could've trimmed some of them out, which are all that end up holding this one back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language, Full Male and Female Nudity, a sex scene, and violence-against-animals.