Film Review: Twisted Thrill Ride of Intense ‘Big Bad Wolves’

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“Big Bad Wolves” pulls no punches. It rips off toenails instead. This incredibly dark thriller, courtesy of the twisted folks who made the indie horror hit “Rabies,” built notable buzz at its Tribeca Film Festival and Chicago International Film Festival screenings but really took off when Quentin Tarantino named it his favorite film of 2013. It’s easy to see what QT loved here with the tonal balance between stunning violence, pitch black humor, and whodunit plotting. It’s the first excellent film of 2014 (even if QT may be going a bit overboard) with a gut punch of an ending.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Imagine an indie horror version of the thriller “Prisoners,” and you’ll have some of the foundation of the narrative of “Big Bad Wolves.” A cop on the edge named Micki (Lior Ashkenazi) is convinced that he has finally figured out the identity of the man who has been kidnapping and beheading local girls. And so Micki hires a couple of thugs to grab the main suspect, a teacher named Dror (Rotem Keinan) and beat him up for information. The move backfires when a clip of the police abuse pops up online and they have to let the suspect go. For now.

Read Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Big Bad Wolves” in our reviews section.

Another young girl is found tortured and murdered in the woods and Micki knows he has to intensify his investigation. As he’s tailing Dror, the man he’s still convinced is the one, he discovers the hard way that he’s not alone. The father of one of the missing girls, whose head was discovered, a burly gentleman named Gidi (Tzahi Grad) has decided he’s tired of waiting for answers about what happened to his daughter. He kidnaps Dror, ties him up in the basement, and promises to do to him what he thinks Dror did to his daughter. At first, Micki goes along with the torture, playing bad-cop-bad-cop to get to the truth. And then he realizes Gidi is truly dangerous and ends up stuck in the middle of a lunatic looking for vengeance and the man he’s convinced is a sociopath child killer. Not a safe place to be.

Writer/directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado have crafted a tight, streamlined narrative that segues smoothly from character-driven drama to something Eli Roth might avert his eyes from to something altogether new. “Big Bad Wolves” works as well as it does because it never lingers too long in any of these movie archetypes. The story of a man torturing another one for information about the whereabouts of his daughter’s head, believe it or not, never gets melodramatic. And every time it feels like the narrative is pushing too far into “Hostel” territory, the writer/directors pull back for long enough to not make the film feel as overwhelming as it easily could have. Don’t get me wrong. There’s some amazingly dark shit in “Big Bad Wolves,” more than a lot of Hollywood horror movies, but it’s never approached in a way that feels over-the-top. It’s rooted in one man’s willingness to get the answers he needs.

Continue reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Big Bad Wolves” review.

Big Bad Wolves
Photo credit: Magnet Releasing