Kalevet

Plot

A brother and sister who run away from home find sanctuary in a deserted nature reserve. When the sister falls into the trap of a psychopathic killer, the brother sets out on a race against time to find help. In a twist of fate the rescue of the sister becomes inadvertently intertwined with the lives of a group of young tennis players, a ranger and his dog, as well as a team of policemen

Cast

A surprisingly competent cast, Yael Grobglas and Ania Bukstein were great here.

Verdict

Israel's first horror movie? Well that was my first Israeli movie ever, I watched it to get my Top 10 Israeli movies going but this is not the best start.

For a start there's no reason for this to be called Rabies, not sure if it's a metaphor for something but let's be clear that's not what the film is about.

It's a bungling horror movie that grabs hold of every American horror liche and doubles down on them with every tired trope and then some. You'd think for the first Israeli horror they'd try to forge their own identity instead of relying on what has worked for others to excess.

Rabies is a truly dire film, it's boring, it's soulless, it's by the numbers.

Rants

Of all the tired horror tropes it's the pet death I'm so very very tired of. Enough already, I can confidently say I've never met anyone who likes it so why does every horror filmmaker insist on doing it. Kill people, leave the pets alone. At this stage it damages a movie, it's predictable and it's simply in bad taste.

The Good

Cast are mostly competent

The Bad

So unoriginal Really quite boring Plot is just an amalgamation of better movies.

Israel's fist horror film, and it's quite a doozy. Not only that, but one of the more unconventional, genre bending efforts I've seen in the genre for a while which comes across especially impressive for not just first time directors but a first time country. I won't go into the plot too much as its a film that one ought to discover for themselves, but a look at the characters is in order. We have Ofer and Tali, who ran away from home only to run afoul of evil in an abandoned nature reserve. Then there's Menashe, surveyor of said reserve and next to get drawn into it. Next come four young tennis players on the way to a game but are waylaid by an accident and finally Danny and Yuval, two cops who come to investigate said accident. Once all the characters are set up, the film gets moving, a black comedy of confusion, strained friendships and mounting anger, plot dependent entirely on character and emotions that spiral inexorably out of control. It all comes down to human nature and breaking points and its rather good to see in the film that peoples actions and reactions in the film feel realistic, whether the odd moment of deliberate malice organic to a character or mostly just desperate and unthinking violent reaction to a problem the film really has something to say underneath the chuckles or the bloodshed. The film is pretty amusing in a largely deadpan manner and the humour is nicely mixed in with the horror even as the tension slowly mounts and things become towards the end rather affecting. There isn't all that much gore but what's there is decent, nice little gruesome jolts achieved with quality practical FX work. It as all the more effect for audience identification with the characters, all of whom are well portrayed. Special mentions for Danny Geva as horny sleaze-ball rich kid cop Yuval, Ania Bukstein as a girl with some Sapphic attraction to a friend going on and Ofer Shechter as a jokester whose assurance and easy manner is sorely tested by affairs. The film could have done with more constant tension I think, with early scenes before everyone gets entangled lacking much of a spark to them, and also towards the end slightly overdoes its emotional farewells, but its solid going all the way and even gave me things to think about afterwards. A fine start for a new entry into the world of horror, definitely worth a look.

Rabies isn't just the first Israeli horror film, a country most people living outside of it mistakenly think suffers from horror on a daily bases, but is also a slasher film with no real slasher. The fact that there isn't one killer, just makes the horror more intense and real: when the going gets tough, the tough (and gentle) get murderous; And when all happens in an enclosed part of the woods known as "Fox reservoir" - it's hard for anyone to escape the part of the man (or woman) with the gun (or ax,knife and anything around). The film follows a brother and sister that flee to the woods to hide their forbidden secret. But in the woods other people hide secrets; a psychopath killer sets traps all over the woods and the sister falls into one of them. The brother seeks for help and is hit by a car with two couples of tennis players that got lost on the way to a tennis tournament. He drags the two men in two the woods to help him and leaving the girls alone on the road. From this point on everything that might go wrong goes worst and involves a forest ranger, two cops and more. What strikes me most about the film is the way in which it lets human nature do its thing without needing any special incentive: everything that happens is just people loosing restrains on their civilized manners. The films seeks to show that movies don't need any super natural killer or a psychopath with a plan - just let people forget the way they were brought by, and anyone can kill. It is both a genre film and a comment about the genre and human beings. The woods is most likely the most important character in the film, and Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado in their directorial debut along with their cinematographer Guy Raz meticulously crafted its appearance as to look like the place where all hell can break loose, though it is usually a nice place to have a picnic. Blending in horror and comedy, the film puts (after more then 60 years) Israel on the map of horror films and hopefully will not just open doors for other young Israeli film makers to make other horror, Sci-fi and even musicals - all genres that have been almost completely forgotten in the history of Israeli cinema, but will also mark the beginning of an ongoing career for the two young directors.

Fresh, inventive, fast paced - this film was like going on a fun roller coaster. Never a dull moment and you do not know exactly what will happen next. Just when you think it is going to follow a formula the bottom drops out. Never having seen any of these actors before added to the experience. At first it may seem there are too many characters but it all blends together at the end. If feels like the directors took the theme of the old movie "After Hours" and paired it with the comedy of "Shaun of the Dead." Then gave it a Cohen brothers twist. I really enjoyed this film and the previous effort (Big Bad Wolves). There are gory scenes (and I dislike gore) but it did not seem excessive or gratuitous.

In general I've been disappointed with Israeli cinema. Rather than giving sincere and insightful expressions of a country with such a heavy sociopolitical atmosphere, a land which underlies so much of the world's history and which has now been so quickly repopulated and rebuilt by a people who have achieved so much under the weight of hatred, exclusion, and genocide, most Israeli filmmakers have followed in the aimless and shallow footsteps of Hollywood trash and self-righteous American liberal con artists. The film "Kalevet," however, is an exception to the current trend of filmmaking in Israel and all the other countries of the world who are to some degree being culturally tainted by one of the worst things America has to offer, i.e., it's cinema. And interestingly enough, "Kalevet" manages to escape the Hollywood pattern by making use of one of it's most simple-minded conventions--the slasher film. By employing sophisticated directing, cinematography, editing, and a screenplay portraying morally complex characters and a narrative that serves as an insightful metaphor for Israeli society as well as a universal statement on the human condition, the creators of "Kalevet" have succeeded in doing what is usually more expected from filmmakers in the more eastern part of Asia, i.e., reinvent a usually meaningless Hollywood genre into something that is not simply entertaining but meaningful.