Day of Wrath (1985) User Reviews

What makes a human?

[hmsgroop · 8/10 · 17 January 2001]

A well-known reporter is to write an article about otarks - creatures that appeared as a result of scientific experiment the purpose of which was to check what a creature with artificially enhanced thinking abilities would be. They were bred from bears originally. But the experiment went wrong: otarks could crack logarithms and Einstein's theory but they were inhuman, they had no pity, compassion, friendliness. In the long run the reporter witnesses the ruin brought upon the local farmers, otarks hunting a girl,and hears a lot of blood-curdling stories. The otarks kill the forester, and eventually besiege the reporter in the abandoned building of the laboratory where the experiment began long ago. The film is about the responsibility of scientists and, probably, about the nature of a human being. It is positive that reason and thinking ability do not make a creature a "human being". The film is almost forgotten, but not rightly so. It is worth seeing.

God-forsaken enigmatic gem by Sever Gansovsky

[figueroafernando · 9/10 · 21 January 2023]

At last a work forgotten by God, with another narrative metric; a diamond set in the ambiguity of the leitmotiv and the linguistic resource in the mirage -movement-inertia- of an improbable character towards an almost impossible off-the-grid zone; Utopian plot turned dystopian by Sever Gansovsky himself from Anatoliy Petrov's "Polygon" in 1977. This is an extravagant journey, to the heart of nowhere, with inhabitants who perhaps are nobody, to the bowels -almost pantheistic- of an ecosystem with not a few vessels communicating with that of Tarkovski's Stalker; but fearless, narcissistic Betley asked for it, fought to go, insisted, voila; the dour Inspector Cust helicoptering him to the site was only little less dour and dour than he'd already expected on the reservation; first with Mr. Miller on horseback in the hollow surrounded by gigantic rocks and the harshness of the silence communing with the echo of his strides, then the townspeople there, grandiloquent in their silence at least until they reached Stainlick's farm, ready for the insane snack: wake faces and a child who does 4-digit multiplication with his mind, that is, an autarch, beasts or beings that have taken possession of humans. Betley wants to record, investigate without stopping but the horse goes crazy, the trees and leaves reproach even Elk Canyon and the reserve keeps its secrets... Are the autarchs men, spirits, beasts? And do they take the children? Why didn't they take Tina, and are they brainwashed, but Bentley was almost talked into trading the camera. When the water reached Bentley's neck, his irrational desire to visit that backwater reserve becomes rational, but supreme filming will no longer suffice. The human beings who lie captivated by the caves of the place, still remember the genesis of the first times and, not to vary, the dream of reversing the condition of the place, just when Bentley manages to convince the harsh Miller to help him against Fiedler, fate. Holds something else for the dying filmmaker, documentarian or journalist whose shoulder-mounted camera will never show the world his vision again.