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The Wolf House (2018)

The Wolf House (2018)

A bone-chilling fairy-tale, as mortifying as it is breathtaking

7.9

Movie

Chile, Germany
German, Spanish
Animation, Drama, Fantasy, Horror
2018
CRISTÓBAL LEÓN, JOAQUÍN COCIÑA
Amalia Kassai, Natalia Geisse
75 min

7.9

The Staff

imdb
rt
wiki

What it's about

María, a girl from Colonia Dignidad, in Chile —a kind of sectarian community, tyrannically mastered by the ruthless Paul Schäfer, a German madman, religious fanatic and child predator, who would end up turning the place into a torture center at the service of the military dictatorship ruled by Augusto Pinochet—, is punished for having lost three pigs, so she decides to run away and take refuge in an abandoned house hidden in the forest.

The take

This mortifying stop-motion fairy-tale is inspired by the very real horrors of Chile’s Colonia Dignidad: a cult colony turned torture camp under the Pinochet regime. Presented as colony propaganda, the tale tells the story of Maria, a girl who runs away from the safety of the colony into the forest and takes refuge in a house with two pigs. What transpires is a gut-wrenching allegory for the rise of fascism, colonialism, and white supremacy. 

The staggering animation which seamlessly shifts mediums from paper mâché to painted walls is a bewildering sight to witness. But it’s the synthesis of this boundary-pushing art and the underlying horrors it depicts, that make this stand as an unmissable cinematic event.

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