The Hour of The Wolf (1968)

If you ask any film buff who Ingmar Bergman is/was, they would most likely tell you he's one of the greatest directors of all time, if you were to ask me who he is, I'd say one of my favorite directors. Bergman is known for his art house films, and such ground breaking pictures such as The Seventh Seal (1957). It is not a rare or strange occurrence for a Bergman film to be dark in nature, or to have dark over/undertones, (the Seventh Seal is about a Knight playing chess with Death) but Hour of the Wolf is Bergman's only official horror movie. Like a lot of Bergman's films, this one can be confusing at times, but I believe if you pay enough

attention to the beginning and end of the story, then you should have a good enough understanding of the film. The story is about an artist (Max von Sydow) who struggles with inner demons, which appear to be physically manifesting themselves and affecting his wife just as badly as they do himself. Now when I say demons in this context, I'm referring to the artist's inner mental struggles and guilt. There is a phrase that is bookended in the film (told at the beginning and the end) that best sums up this film's plot: "Do you think it is possible that if a woman loves a man enough for such a long time, that eventually she becomes like that man?" This film has some of the trippiest imagery Bergman ever used, and you almost feel that you're going crazy along with the main character. It is of course left to interpretation however if what happens to the character is actually happening to him or not, (that gives it a similar feel to The Innocents [1961]) but that of course was intentional. The movie has several allusions to classic horror movies/literature/concepts, one of them being an actor who looks exactly like Bela Lugosi, and another being the presence of Poe's raven. I really liked this one, the only thing that bothered me was that the plot was sometimes hard to follow, but as I mentioned before, the ending in my opinion more or less justifies that. I give it a 4.75/5, view the trailer below: