Emily Naser-Hall
Cristóbal León and Joaquin Cociña’s The Wolf House (2018) commences with an illusion of pastoral ideal. Analog footage displays a table laden with honey-filled jars, the voices of children singing an off-key melody crafting an atmosphere of peacefulness. This honey, the voiceover narration explains, is the lifeblood of an enigmatic community known only as “the Colony,” an isolated community of German expatriates whom the narrator claims seek only to exist in harmony with the natural beauty of southern Chile. A montage shows footage of blond children in lederhosen, white women keeping house, and benevolent nurses tending to native Chilean peasants whom the narrator identifies as “our partners in hardship.” But the video soon takes a sharp turn. “The dark legend that has been created around us is mainly due to ignorance,” the narrator argues in practiced Spanish, his German accent thinly concealed. “They are ignorant, those who fear a community that remains isolated and pure.” The narrator then explains that the Colony has chosen to release footage “rescued from the vaults of our colony” to demonstrate the community’s purity and disprove the aforementioned dark legend. What follows, however, is over sixty minutes of nightmare fuel that utterly fails to counteract any rumors of the Colony’s insidiousness.
