[TADFF 2019 Review] Werewolf/Wilkolak is Bleak but Hopeful

“Beware of the Werewolf,” a soldier tells his comrades upon freeing the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in 1945. It’s a refrain repeated throughout as soldiers discus the werewolf lurking in the forests or talk about hunting the monster. The creature hangs over the movie like a pall. It’s not a spoiler to start off by saying that Werewolf isn’t, in fact, about a literal werewolf. The horrors laid bare in this Polish fable are grounded and real, if no less horrifying because, as we know, real monsters are more terrifying than mythical ones. So yes, there are vicious wolves here and it’s fully grounded in reality…but it’s the Frankenstein/Frankenstein Monster knowledge/wisdom thing. Because Werewolf is actually about werewolves.

Werewolf begins with a group of children liberated from the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, orphaned from the war and with nowhere to go. So they’re shuffled off to a derelict manor that’s been turned into  makeshift orphanage under the responsibility of Jadwiga (Danuta Stenka), a hardened woman who doesn’t suffer any fools. The moss-covered manor was once a sight to see, but it has fallen into squalor. It has no electricity. No water. No food. It barely provides protection.

Up until this point, the eight children of varying ages have been under the guidance of Hanka (Sonia Mietielica), a young woman with scars on her wrists, where she tore at them with her teeth. She deposits the children, telling Jadwiga they have lice and need a bath, and announces her intention to go to leave and go to Warsaw, but before she can, things go bad. Jadwiga dies under mysterious circumstances and the Nazi-trained hounds who were released into the wild are circling the mansion, hungry and desperate. With supplies dwindling and situations getting dire, the group of kids are forced to come together or die.

Writer/Director Adrian Panek’s Werewolf is bleak. If the trauma above wasn’t enough, Adrian’s film is also a coming-of-age story centered around burgeoning sexuality between three of the teens. One of the liberated children is the bespeckled Wladek (Kamil Polnisiak) and he’s infatuated with Hanka. For the longest time, it seems that he’s been the alpha dog who kept his pack in line and out of trouble. He is quiet, but calculating. In one of the earliest scenes, as the Nazis are casually murdering people inside the camp, they burst into the kid’s rooms and Wladek diffuses the situation by shouting planking instructions. The kids immediately fall in line and it “entertains” the Nazi’s long enough for the children to be rescued.

But with the arrival of Hanys (Nicolas Przygoda), a German kid the group constantly mocks for his heritage, Wladek’s position of power gets tested. Hanys is handsome and strong and he seems to have caught Hanka’s attention, which doesn’t sit well with Wladek. So while the world around them continues to fall to pieces and most of the children are looking for food and water, the two boys vie for control within their fragile pack. But also for Hanka’s affection. Jealousy and teenage hormones fuels the dramatic moments and creates a powder keg seconds away from exploding.

The situation brings to mind Lord of the Flies and references it in a number of subtle ways. Obviously, there’s the parable of this group of young children forced to govern themselves without any parental figure. There’s squabbling and power grabs, even though there’s no one other than Hanka that’s truly in power. There’s the monstrous wolves (and repeated inferences to a werewolf) taking the place of the mythical beast in the novel.

Additionally, Werewolf mines similar subtext and allegories that William Golding’s novel also explored. But by setting the narrative towards the end of World War II and focusing on a group of kids who had been degraded and devastated by the Nazi regime, Panek’s film is not only more subtle in its themes but it ultimately has a more hopeful look at humanity that is trying to claw its way out of horror. Which brings me back to my original statement: Werewolf is a film without werewolves but is actually about werewolves.

When you think of what a werewolf represents, it’s the beast hidden inside of man. The inner urges that debase a person and make them animalistic, feral and violent. It’s a state that the orphaned children have been forced into because of the war. One of the first things we see the children do upon release is gather around and stomp on a rat, destroying it like a pack of wolves would descend on someone. It’s violent and vicious. These are kids, after all, some of them probably no older than seven or eight; but they’ve experienced more trauma than any adult ever should.

The first thing Hanka tells Jadwiga is that they need to find food for the children before they turn on each other. Their imprisonment and mistreatment by the Nazis have turned them feral and forced them to think solely of their next meal and of self-protection. They are acting out the cruelty taught them by their captors.

But the events of the movie force them to work together, to take back the humanity that has been stripped from them for so long. And it’s here that I think Adrian Panek’s story digs into the concept of lycanthropy and the need to reclaim one’s humanness. For without it, they are no better than the angry, hungry wolves lapping at their gates. Working with a cast of non-professional actors—kids, no less!—can be tough, but Panek still manages to wring decent performances from the young crew. Narratively, I think Werewolf is a little sloppy and lacks focus. It adds extraneous subplots involving bunkers and hidden soldiers and its final climactic moments feel a bit shoehorned in because of it. But it’s because of the subtext and the theme that I think the movie succeeds and becomes more than some of the more wobbly parts suggest.

When I sat down to write this review, I didn’t know if it was going to be positive because so much of the second act felt muddled for me. The more I thought about the intent, subtext and theme, the more I found myself warming to it. So while it doesn’t reach the thematic and narrative levels of other war-set fables (e.g., Pan’s Labyrinth or even Tigers Are Not Afraid), I think it succeeds more than I originally expected it to. What resonated most for me was this allegory of a world, decimated by inhumanity, trying to claw its way out of a war that devastated so much. Seeing hope in a group of people and animals who have been rendered hopeless by the cruelties of man trying to find a way to reclaim themselves.

Werewolf is a powerful reminder of retaining, and more importantly, reclaiming humanity in the face of overwhelming adversity.