Werewolf | Telescope Film
Werewolf

Werewolf (Wilkołak)

Critic Rating

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User Rating

  • Poland,
  • Netherlands,
  • Germany
  • 2019
  • · 88m

Director Adrian Panek
Cast Nicolas Przygoda, Kamil Polnisiak, Sonia Mietielica, Werner Daehn, Danuta Stenka
Genre Horror

At the end of World War II, a group of children freed from a concentration camp in Poland live alone in a mansion in the woods. As they attempt to find a way to survive, mysterious and frightening threats begin to emerge in the forest around them, including violent dogs.

Stream Werewolf

What are critics saying?

80

Film Threat by Alex Saveliev

Panek doesn’t sugarcoat anything in his beautifully-shot, grim tale, but ultimately, it’s his belief in human kindness that prevails. There may not be any lycanthropes in Werewolf, but they’d most likely seem like puppies next to the true evil he depicts.

60

Time Out

The mostly non-professional actors are uniformly excellent, while the painterly cinematography (a Polish speciality) and spartan score create a suitably chilly mood.

60

The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton

Even if Werewolf lacks bite as an allegorical horror thriller, it works pretty well as a psychological study of tender young minds struggling to relearn their humanity after years of brutal mistreatment by inhuman adults. The unschooled cast are unusually natural and convincing for child actors, and technical credits are generally superior.

60

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

It’s a disturbing, challenging drama, but one that perhaps begins to lose its narrative focus as the story proceeds.

60

Time Out by David Hughes

The mostly non-professional actors are uniformly excellent, while the painterly cinematography (a Polish speciality) and spartan score create a suitably chilly mood.

40

The Observer (UK) by Wendy Ide

Choppy editing adds to the sense that this picture is struggling to achieve a tonal balance and work out exactly what it is trying to say.