The Wolf House (JoaquÃ*n Cociña, Cristóbal León)

[Idioteque Stalker]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOGYwNzc3YmEtYjNlMS00OWM0LT g3ZjEtZjMxMDFlMTk0YThmXkEyXkFq cGdeQXVyOTE4MDA1NDI@._V1_SY100 0_CR0,0,706,1000_AL_.jpg

IMDB (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8173728/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0)

Trailer:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCoYazbA1Ic

[Idioteque Stalker]

This looks awesome. Mods can move to 2018 forum if deemed necessary.

[Idioteque Stalker]

The near-constant voiceover, psychological/political symbolism, and sheer amount of visual detail make processing this one a daunting task. I was anticipating some horrifying abstraction based on the trailer, but I didn't expect just how loose the narrative structure would be--this plays more as a series of closely-related shorts (with some wild shifts in tone) than a beginning-to-end story. Plenty of Quay Brothers influence here, sure, but to me it feels even more like a Bunuel/Dali dreamscape (complete with dream logic). The ending is infuriating. This should be studied in all art colleges, but it's not something I'd want to watch all the time.

[Peng]

Even though it adopts the broad structure of a (fake) propaganda tale for kids, the details and animation belie that outward surface, and instead transform the film into one of those twisted, surrealist Grimm fairy tales that signal a real-word darkness underneath. The slightly jerky quality of stop-motion, combined with the always spectacular but deeply unsettling visual details crammed into every frame, just add to the chilling feeling of this being a sideways, allegorical look to cope with an on-going trauma (in this case, a cult (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_Dignidad) full of criminal activities, torture for dictatorship regime, and child abuse). It's overwhelming and exhausting already at 75 minutes, even if that's the point, but also genuinely singular and hard to shake off. 7.5/10

[Philip J. Fry]

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Ineligible? Booo!

At least people with Shudder will be able to watch it.

[Stay Puft]

This was fantastic. The constantly shifting perspectives and physical mediums, painting and re-painting walls, characters stepping into physical space as stop-motion puppets and back to drawings on walls, routinely occupying different puppets and materials... mind-melting. At one point, there's even a painting of Maria on a glass pane or something held just in front of the camera, and she's playing catch with a pig painted on the wall, and the ball goes back and forth from painting to physical object in the room to painting, and I was just staring slack-jawed in disbelief. It's bursting with creativity, continually re-inventing itself as it goes, and with such incredible purpose, the constant unease of being in that environment, the unsteady and anxious and obsessive re-processing of unspeakable traumas. The sound design is incredible, too.

I will say it didn't end as strong as it started, and did start to feel a little long in the tooth even at 75 minutes; after watching Maria's puppet reconstruct itself with its blue dress so many times it did start to feel like the movie had reached the bottom of its bag of tricks, and the wolf's direct address at the end of the film struck me as entirely unnecessary at that point. The framing of it as a lost film is purposeful, but the ending felt like it was trying to circle back to that in a thematic way while also juggling a rather abrupt (and blunt) conclusion to its fairytale. I don't know, that aspect might play better on a rewatch now that I know what to expect. It's certainly overwhelming on a first viewing, but incredibly impressive nonetheless. Easily one of my favorites of the year.

[Philip J. Fry]

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