Disappointingly, this movie (Original title Wilkołak) doesn’t have any “real” werewolves — though the title does have a double meaning. Or perhaps triple? But what is a werewolf? King Lycaon, turned into a wolf by Zeus as punishment for trying to feed him the flesh of his own murdered son (see Ovid’s Metamorphosis)? The societal delusion caused by medieval peasants whose rye was tainted with the fungal hallucinogen ergot (that was a thing)? Or elite SS troops in World War II?

Initially, this movie points to that last. But that’s misdirection.

Eight orphaned evacuees from the Gross-Rosen World War II concentration camp wind up in a dilapidated mansion in the woods, awaiting further rescue or support from the Russians that liberated them.  “Beware the wehrwolf” says one of the men as the truck trundles into deep, isolating forest.

The woman who lives there (Danuta Stenka) tries her best to take care of them, but the house has no power, water is dodgy, and there is very little food. In an early scene, the kids are seen fighting over a can of dog food — which they may not have known, as the label was in English.

When the Russian soldiers finally return, it’s not to bring any real relief, but to attempt to assault the teenaged Hanka (Sonia Mietielica). Older boy the bespectacled Władek (Kamil Polnisiak) fails to intervene, and is shoved aside by the boy known as Hanys (Nicolas Przygoda), a derogatory term roughly equivalent to “kraut,” since he alone is not Polish, but German. Hanys rescues Hanka and chases the Russian soldier outside, where he and his comrade are attacked by vicious dogs. Wolves, perhaps? This is the second meaning of werewolf.

Hanys himself is accused repeatedly of being a spy or traitor. Is he a beast hiding in the skin of a man? Perhaps Hanys is the werewolf after all?

Soon the whole house is surrounded by vicious dogs, which we learn are attack dogs escaped from the liberated concentration camp. It now becomes a siege film.

“Is it true the SS officers turned into wolves?” asks one of the children.

They starve, drink bad water, get sick. Days pass. No one brings help. Did the Russians escape?

Władek seems intent on getting rid of Hanys, perhaps embarrassed at his own cowardice. Perhaps suspecting him of traitorous German ways. And perhaps Władek has the beast inside him, after all.

“There is no home. This is all there is,” says Hanka to a child crying to leave.

A movie that elicits interesting questions is a movie that can hold the viewer. The mystery of what the werewolf is kept me right to the end. And it’s ultimately incidental. It’s a little bit Lord of the Flies, I suppose, but mostly these kids are suffering, escaped from the brutality of the concentration camp but barely believing they’re really free. Without family, without food, they struggle to adapt and overcome. They neither form unrealistic saccharine bonds nor needless squabbles and hierarchies.

Which is clearly not to say there is no conflict. This movie starts bleak and gets intense pretty quickly, all with a backdrop of a gorgeous forest and a beautifully decayed mansion with a rude word in Russian spraypainted on the side — possibly implying a service the woman offered the soldiers?

WEREWOLF is well-acted, intense, interesting, beautiful and bleak. Unless you’re put off by subtitles or find the themes triggering, this movie comes with an unreserved recommendation.