Time for another Michael Haneke movie, this
time the 2003 German flick, TIME OF THE WOLF. This flick is Haneke's crack at
post-apocalyptic fiction and he does a good job. It makes me wonder if Cormac
McCarthy saw this flick before he wrote THE ROAD. Did you, Cormac? I'm curious!
The film gets off to a surprising start: we're
already post apocalypse, and a family arrives at their home with a car
well-stocked full of supplies. Looks like these people have their shit together
and have a chance to survive whatever the rest of the movie has in store.
Except as soon as they step into their own home, they're confronted by a family
of squatters. And before you know it, dad's dead and the supplies are gone.
Mom (Isabelle Huppert) takes to the road with
kids and searches for supplies and a place to stay, but it's the apocalypse, so
people are reluctant to help. The older of the two kids is her daughter (Anais
Demoustier) and she has a younger son as well (Lucas Biscombe). Eventually the
family meets up with a self-reliant, almost feral young man (Hakim Taleb) who
joins their group and continues with them until they come upon a community of
survivors who live in a warehouse near a train station, waiting for a train
that may never come.
No cause for this apocalypse is ever given.
The land is shrouded in fog, people are running out of food, and there's no law
and order. That's all we know. Haneke shoots with natural light, does his usual
thing of keeping his grim subjects at arms length, but still manages a hopeful
and powerfully emotional ending, both literally and symbolically.
You might be wondering how this is a horror
film. In this one, regular people are the monsters.
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