Time of the Wolf

In today's digital bog of empty light and marketing deceptions, this is what early-millennium Euro art-film masterpieces feel like--lean, qualmish, abstracted to the point of parable but as grounded as a gravedigging.

One of the most harrowing and plausible visions of apocalypse since George A. Romero's 1968 zombie shocker, "Night of the Living Dead."

At its best, the film sustains the heightened tension of great science fiction, dropping in on a frightening new world that's just this side of familiar.

Time of the Wolf is grounded so deeply in the reality of society gone awry that the anxiety faced by Isabelle Huppert's character as she struggles to keep her family together transfers onto the audience and never leaves.

Moviegoers expecting a conventional sci-fi fantasy will be disappointed; Haneke never explains the vague disaster, nor does he offer any definitive solution.

In the somewhat muted lead role, Huppert really is a marvel.

I would rather have a more interesting group of desperate people to spend my post-apocalyptic time with.