Hatred

Wannabe Come and See that gives the audience a thorough lesson in gratuitousness. Whereas the Soviet masterpiece worked brilliantly with subjective perspective and presented the atrocities of war as if naturally – often only through fleeting point-of-view shots or through sound and off-screen action – here every death must be like something out of torture porn. While the main character guides the events, the story crumbles into multiple episodes, each ending with just another brutal killing, and inadvertently creating a chaos that is difficult to navigate. In doing so, the film applies a sub-genre about a community of characters who treat each other differently at different times, but lacks psychological clues for the abrupt transition between stages, relying only on chaos, marked by brutality and the idea that everyone is a bastard. Sure, almost all of them are scum in a corner of their souls, and the moral lines are blurred during the war in ways I don't even want to imagine (and the film certainly doesn't lie about that), but as a history lesson, Volhynia is just terribly self-serving and repetitive. If you haven't seen it and miss the possibility of comparison, you should take a quick look at Come and See. (05/12/2022)

At first, I was under the impression that I was watching an educational documentary about Volhynian folklore, but then it turned out that the creators made a film that steamrolled even my cynicism-soaked soul. I don’t feel like joking this time, the film aroused only disgust and feelings of unease. What I liked about it was that it didn’t take sides. Both sides were equally bad, which corresponded to reality. The atmosphere was perfect (raw and chilling), the tension was ever-present and the strain on the psyche was tremendous. As I have already said, no one was spared, but if the Ukrainians consider Bandera nationalists to be heroes, then let Putin keep Crimea... (10/31/2018)

The Poles takes advantage of their strong filmography period and open one brutal historical topic after another every single year. In the case of the movie Volhynia they go back to the Second World War and clearly show how the locals lived peacefully until the war began. At that moment something weird happened with local people and it turned them into even bigger monsters than the Germans who are in this movie actually portrayed as the good guys… unlike the Ukrainians and the Poles. Because of the horror of some scenes I wouldn’t have a problem to compare this movie to Russian Come and See. If you see something terrible, then can expect to see something even worse in the next minute. After a while you will become so numb that you will only stare dumbly at the screen, uncomprehending how far the Ukrainian struggle for independence could have gone. Absolute horror… I had no words. I have to admit I had no idea something like this even happened in East Poland. Personally, I would be very interested to know how the Poles feel about their neighbors now. When somebody talk to me about how much we, the Czech people, collaborated with the Germans during the WWII, I will probably tell them about the monsters living in Volhynia at that time… An incredible movie, which everybody who is interested in war should watch to see what war can actually do to people… (02/01/2019)

(Non) humanized (non) adaptation of Snyder's freezing Bloody Lands in the form of Ukrainian-Polish-German-Russian-Jewish (non) coexistence. But it is sadly fragmented into individual scenes from hell à la Come and see at the expense of cohesion. Gradually, the viewer becomes apathetic in the same way the main character does. Whether or not it was a purpose and how much it is / is not useful to the overall experience is a completely different question. (04/08/2017)

For my taste, it's too long (not much happens in the first two hours and there are some very deaf passages), but the final half hour is literally like something out of another movie: intense, brutal, shocking with a devastating impact. Surprisingly, the Poles don’t pull any punches when it comes to children, toddlers, pregnant women and priests. I was sure of three stars the whole time, but for the strong ending and the fact that it is about our neighbours, I'm throwing in a fourth star. 70% (04/27/2017)