A thick mist blankets the countryside as two riders cut their way through the waterlogged landscape, man and beast alike soaked by a slanted rain as ignorant of mercy as it was of the difference between pleasure and pain, redemption and damnation. There was only the fall. Then, a commotion. A man and woman hunted by a group of men, unaware that their role would soon be reversed from predator to prey. One of the riders dismounts, his boots splashing in the puddles, creating tsunamis in miniature. Time slows. The men turn their weapons on the intruder, irritated at the interruption of their sport, but to no avail. Even unarmed, the masked interloper makes quick work of his opponents, moving faster than his opponents can react, disarming and leaving them to wallow in their misery in the mud, and the dirt, and the rain. Always and still, there was the rain.

The year is 2001. The movie is Brotherhood of the Wolf. The result is a cult classic in the making. Based - very loosely as is usually the case - on actual events, the movie tells the story of two unlikely friends sent to solve the mystery of reports of a vicious beast that is terrorizing the French countryside. For sheer value, one can hardly do better, as Brotherhood of the Wolf is really (at least) five movies in one: an historical epic, a romance, a detective story, a political drama, and an action movie. A story that involves secret cults, bone swords, brothels, royal politics, evil deformed appendages, and taxidermy, Brotherhood of the Wolf is a very specific sort of fever dream that could only have sprung forth from the collective consciousness of the early 2000s. As brazen as it is inventive, Brotherhood of the Wolf is nothing if not unique, and truly one of those films that stands alone almost as a genre unto itself. So join your intrepid hosts at the Reel Film Chronicles as they take you on a journey into the world of 18th Century France to unravel the mystery of the beast of Gévaudan.

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Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

| directed by: Christophe Gans

| starring: Samuel Le Bihan - - Mark Dacascos - Vincent Cassel - Émilie Dequenne - Monica Bellucci

| Adventure - Action - Horror - History

| 143 min

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