Kalevet

Year: 2010
Directors: Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado
Screenwriter: Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado
Starring: Lior Ashkenazi, Danny Geva, Ania Bukstein, Menashe Noy, Yael Grobglas, Ran Danker
Running Time: 90 minutes
Genre: Horror, dark comedy

Summary: A brother and sister, Pini (played by Ofer Schechter) and Tali (Liat Harlev), run away from home into a densely wooded nature preserve where they fall into traps set by a psychotic killer (Yaron Motola). Pini escapes and desperately tries to search for a way to rescue his sister. Along the way a group of young tennis players, a forestry worker (Noy) and a sadistic cop (Geva) and his more restrained partner (Ashkenazi) become involved in a violent criss-cross of accident and murder, as the tensions between friends, enemies and strangers begin to flare violently out of control.

Opinions: This film (the title translates as Rabies) is the first slasher horror film ever to come out of Israel, and is probably one of the best, and most interesting, to have come around for some time. The film is very entertaining and packed with enough gruesome set pieces to satisfy horror fans and is frequently very suspenseful, it is one of those films where literally anyone can die at any time. The film's violence is handled very well and the more graphically explicit gore takes place off-screen there is also plenty of intentional humour.
The film-makers were obviously well aware of slasher movie cliches and seem to have had a lot of fun playing with them. For example almost the entire movie takes place in broad daylight and the psycho killer is pretty much a minor charcater with most of the violence being perpetrated on themselves by the typical "vicitms" or "heroes" of the horror film.
This is a real treat for fans and well-worth checking out.



Yael Grobglas, Ania Bukstein and Lior Ashkenazi in Kalevet