Director: Jacques Molitor
Year: 2023
Country: Luxembourg/Belgium
Alternate Titles: Kommunioun
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Trying to raise her son alone, a single mother grows alarmed at the repeated accusations that he’s biting people and takes him away to his father’s parent’s house in the countryside to raise him, but their clashing values make it difficult for her to believe what he’s becoming while staying there.
Review:
This was an intriguing if ultimately flawed genre effort. One of the better elements here is the highly effective and intriguing setup that plays out with several prominent elements coming together. The general gist of the film is the coming-of-age story, albeit one with the protagonist not being human but rather a werewolf thanks to his father, but instead of taking a more linear path through this setup, it turns more into a clashing set of ideals between old-world values and modern ones. That the grandparents, with their stately and stoic response to everything happening and are ready to dole out whatever is needed to ensure the situation goes smoothly without any hiccups, tend to be the ones who’ve got the right idea on how to handle his treatment the more time they spend there leads a lot of credence to their system and creating conflict as a result. This ends up creating a genuinely enjoyable final half where the action picks up and provides some rather intriguing concepts to come about due to it letting this play out, making for some intriguing features here.
There are some big issues here keeping this one down. One of the main instances here is the films’ use repeated usage of stupidity regarding the various subplots simply as a means of making the storyline work. The mother’s refusal to acknowledge help of any kind regarding her son, who’s been shown on multiple occasions to get into incidents of biting people his own age, emerges from the whole affair without bringing the authorities onto the scene or any other kind of repercussions that instead enable her to get away to the parents’ house where even more unnatural behavior occurs. Numerous mention is made of how they never knew of the son’s presence or of their impending visit yet is taken in and made a member of the family with little explanation or discussion should set off plenty of alarms as to what’s going on as there not being any connection between them until this point so it simply comes off as a means of furthering the storyline with contrivance rather than anything.
The other downside to this one is the rather measured and low-key approach taken here which keeps everything at a reserved tempo and pace. Not so much relying on grandiose action, elaborate special effects, or genuine horror scenes to tell the story here as it’s much much about the grandparents’ secretive behavior and methods that are pushing everything along leaves the film with quite a lot of extreme dialogue-heavy scenarios that might not be as eventful or exciting to most viewers out there. The main change that occurs nearly fifty minutes into the film is the first such instance of that happening throughout the film which is far too long for this one to go along without more happening here as this just leaves the film with way too many instances of nothing horrific happening for long stretches of the running time. This is also due to the film having way too many subplots for what it’s trying to do and could’ve trimmed some of them out, which are all that end up holding this one back.
Overview: **.5/5
An intriguing effort more than anything else, this has some solid ideas at play that gets undone by some pretty big problems that manage to hold this back more than it should. Those who are fine with the flaws and enjoy this kind of approach might enjoy this the most while most others out there should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment