The Cinematheque

“A tour-de-force of visceral filmmaking, Wolf’s Hole is both a gonzo genre joyride and a blistering allegory for the psychic violence wrought by authoritarian oppression.”

Jesse Trussell, Brooklyn Academy of Music

Věra Chytilová’s strange horror/science-fiction hybrid uses a conventional teen slasher movie scenario as the basis for a political allegory about group dynamics, tyranny, and repression. Eleven disparate adolescents, gathered for a skiing camp at an isolated winter resort, find themselves preyed upon and set against one another by their three mysterious instructors. Chytilová enlivens the proceedings with her typical stylistic verve, using a vertiginous arsenal of zooms, zip-pans, and handheld camerawork to evoke her young characters’ disorientation, and setting it all to a suitably eerie score by popular Czech musician and composer (and future politician) Michael Kocáb.

“Joyously freaky … Ever the trickster, Chytilová once again preaches that the only morality lies in chaos.”

Mark Lukenbill, Screen Slate