"This fairy tale was written by the Israeli police, based on true events. And like any fairy tale, ours also begins with a wolf. The wolf is you, by the way."
Written and directed by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado. 2013.
The scene: two men, Dror and Micki, imprisoned in a basement. Micki's a cop, Dror an accused pedophile. Their captor, Gidi, is a father. His daughter's corpse was found in the woods, missing a head. Gidi wants to know where Dror has buried the head. His plan: torture Dror by breaking his fingers and pulling out his toenails. Eventually, once he's learned what he wants to know, Gidi plans to cut Dror's head off with a rusty saw. Micki, the cop, is a tough guy with a conscience, and his conscience got in the way, so he's handcuffed to a pipe, helpless to watch as all manner of torture is wrought upon the shackled Dror. At one point, Gidi bakes a cake laced with sedatives and plans to feed Dror a slice, if only because this is one of the methods Dror has allegedly employed on his victims: he drugs them with sweets, violates them, tortures them, and decapitates them. "I put one candle," Gidi says, presenting the slice of cake to Dror, who is strapped to a chair, his fingers already broken by a hammer. "At our age, many candles would be impolite."
Did I mention this is a comedy?
Big Bad Wolves is a perfect concoction: part Tarantino and part Coens, part Grimm's and part Hitchcock. The music evokes Bernard Herrmann at every turn, and the premise, imagery, and violence are all firmly rooted in the juicy subtext of "Little Red Riding Hood" and, well, pretty much every fairy tale you've ever heard. And yet: at no point does the movie seem unoriginal. Israeli directing duo Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado (the first directors to make a horror film in Israel!) have written and directed a thrilling movie with a sense of humor a mile wide. They call it a revenge narrative, something to pay back the adults for telling them bedtime stories that were so horrific. It's evident, from the first shot, they know precisely the effect they intend with every scene.
There's a lyrical moment in the final act, when Micki escapes the basement, flees through the woods, and, after bursting out of the trees, encounters an Arab on horseback in the middle of the road, lit in a circle of orange lamplight. Micki throws his hands up, and the shot's constructed so that we don't immediately see the threat. The tension deflates when, surprise, there is no threat: the Arab isn't armed; he's just a guy on horseback. Micki asks to borrow his phone. The Arab hands over his iPhone 4S, exasperated by the assumption he is dangerous. "You know how it is," Micki apologizes with a shrug. The two men agree: they get it. It's how fear works.
Very much, this is a horror film, and it's rooted in an age-old tradition that surprises, delights, and terrifies. As children, we fear the big bad wolves. What the fairy tales never tell us is how we grow up to be them.
