 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Wolfkin (aka Kommunioun) • Year: 2022 • Country: Luxembourg, Belgium • Director: Jacques Molitor • Main cast: Louise Manteau, Victor Dieu, Marja-Leena Junker, Jules Werner, Marco Lorenzini, Myriam Muller • Runtime: 90 minutes • Production company: Les Films Fauves, Novak Production, WTFilms (distribution) • TRAILER
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Wolfkin (2022), also known as Kommunioun in its original language, is one of the best and most personal werewolves and shapeshift movies I’ve ever seen. Far from the typical tales of men hunting the creatures, here there is told a story from the point of view of the family, the psychological implications of the condition, the discovering and fears, and the respect and traditions this ancient curse brings. Yet, when it is time to display the cruelty of the wild animal side living in the cursed human beings, the movie doesn’t hesitate to get dirty.
The movie starts with the intercourse between the young Elaine and her mysterious lover Patrick, and that’s pretty much the last time we’re seeing him, at least in his human shape, because he vanishes into the forest. And then we are taken a few years later, with Elaine as a struggling working-class single mother taking care of the 10 years old Martin who is an out-of-the-ordinary troubled kid. Realizing that her son is not like the rest, Elaine and the boy take a trip to the mansion where Patrick’s parents live searching for answers. And, boy, she is finding some hard-to-digest answers there.
Written, directed, and acted with sublime care, Wolfkin (2022) is a coming out age story marked by the supernatural nature of its characters. Although since the very start, the audience knows this is somehow a werewolves story, we are discovering the horrors of the truth at the same time as the poor mother played supremely by Louise Manteau does, and we are also coming across the reality of the wild condition and transformation stages the little boy, incarnated flawless by Victor Dieu, is going through. Perhaps this is not a movie for crazy plot twists, since we already know what a werewolf is and what can happen when that shit is in your blood, but its narrative and delivery of the events can sure bring some good surprises.
Directed by Jacques Molitor, who is also the writer alongside Régine Abadia and Magali Negroni, Wolfkin (2022) has a strong feminine side, it gets closer to being told from the point of view of the mother. That mother who is truly scared, but not so much for her life but for the fate of her son, a boy that she loves more than anything else. That boy starts to behave like another person, not so human, more like an enraged wild animal, and yet, there she is, bringing her unconditional love to that being who might. The cruel or tragic conclusion of the events doesn’t matter to her, she is the mother and will always be by the side of her creature, and he will always be her little boy.
And this is what I think pure horror is. Horror is not only violence, people getting slashed, guts and entrails all over the floor with bodies wide open in a puddle of blood. Horror needs fear, it needs conflict, it needs danger, but it also needs love. How are you going to be afraid of anything if you don’t love it first?
Wolfkin (2022) is one of those perfect films that any horror lover needs to have in orbit every now and then. A film that puts the story first, on top of any egos and preconceived ideas. And it’s a story deliciously written and executed.
RATE: 7/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt15289678
