Summer, 1945. Eight children from Gross Rosen concentration camp find a provisional hiding place in an abandoned orphanage nearby, lost among forests. It seems that after the horrors of the war feral children may come back to normal life. All of a sudden idyllic atmosphere of peace and quietness is interrupted. The nightmare returns. In the surrounding forests wolfhounds are circling. The dogs were released by SS officers before the liberation of Gross Rosen camp.
Wolfhounds - taught and used to kill prisoners - surrounded young heroes in the orphanage. All the attempts of escaping the place are failing. Children without any food and water turn into madness and wilderness once again. But the real danger lurks inside the palace.
If you think that a “post-war” movie in sub-genre “camp” is not able to cope with the logic of a horror genre and display a group of incarcerated children and youth surrounded by Nazi’s trained dogs captured in an empty house, you should watch “Werewolf”. In spite of its appearance, the film moves on a narrow border, of which one of its sides tries to normalize violence and exploitation to stimulate the viewer and create a pure suspension. On the other hand, it is merely a symbolic consideration of the critical conditions that reality is just an excuse for it. Without being on either side, the film takes advantage of both types of film to achieve something more to the display the human beings with their animal nature. That is why at the beginning of the film Germans do not differ much from the two Russian and German soldiers at the end of the movie. At the end, it seems that escape is not a solution, and it does not give the impression that violence just brings violence. The film helps up to cope with violence through learning the ways which overcome the animal behaviors of humans to avoid the violence.
Despite the title, Werewolf isn’t about supernatural horrors, but those that are perpetrated by humans and the dangers that lurk, and can spring from, within. It is summer 1945, and the war is coming to an end at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. The Nazis are slaughtering prisoners en masse – except for one group of children, ranging in age from infants to late teens, who prove ‘entertaining’ enough to be spared. The eight children find a provisional hiding place in an abandoned orphanage nearby, lost among forests. It seems that after the horrors of the war feral children may come back to normal life. All of a sudden idyllic atmosphere of peace and quietness is interrupted. The nightmare returns. In the surrounding forests wolfhounds are circling. The dogs were released by SS officers before the liberation of Gross Rosen camp. Wolfhounds – taught and used to kill prisoners – surrounded young heroes in the orphanage. All the attempts of escaping the place are failing. Children without any food and water turn into madness and wilderness once again. But the real danger lurks inside the palace. Although it has a fairly familiar story, Werewolf is seriously charming and deeply engaging.
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