Big Bad Wolves – Film Review

A full-on Israeli horror thriller with an unsettling black comedy spin, Big Bad Wolves bears a strong resemblance plotwise to the Hugh Jackman thriller Prisoners.

Children are being abducted and brutally murdered. The main suspect in the killings, Dror (Rotem Keinan), a mild-mannered religious studies teacher, is arrested but he’s released through a police blunder. This prompts ex-commando-turned businessman Gidi (Tzahi Grad), the father of the latest victim who’s out for revenge, and a vigilante police detective operating outside the boundaries of law to take direct action. They tie Dror to a chair in the father’s basement and start ripping Dror’s fingernails and toe nails out to extract a confession and details of his daughter’s fate and whereabouts. Is he innocent or not? It doesn’t seem to matter.

Just when they’re in the middle of this sick business, Gidi’s father Eli (Guy Adler) arrives on the scene and catches them at it. Arriving with a healing pot of chicken soup to cure his son’s fake flu, the initially caring-seeming Eli turns out to be the sickest one of them all. All three torturers seem quite nice, kindly sorts of guys.

Big Bad Wolves is scary, shocking stuff, done with quite a lot of style and brio, and a great deal of conviction. The film works as an ultra-tense thriller but the screenplay is also invested with an interesting set of moral values and important points to make. I guess that’s about the nature of revenge, vigilantism, torture and the Israeli security system and its methods.

After a lot of really nasty, appalling torture violence, the black comedy arrives a little late and seems out of place. But it’s effective and doesn’t destroy the film’s power to frighten and disturb. Writer-directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado negotiate this minefield expertly.

(C) Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com