Rent Steppenwolf (2024)

Brutality and Bleak Horizons - Steppenwolf review by griggs

Steppenwolf drags you through a dusty, war-ravaged landscape with a grizzled antihero and a stammering, neurodiverse trafficked sex worker searching for her abducted son. It’s a harsh and often uncomfortable watch—especially given how casually the man dishes out violence—but there’s a grim fascination in their dysfunctional alliance. The direction is unflinching, favouring long takes and sparse dialogue that let the silence fester. The cinematography captures the Kazakh wilderness's desolate beauty—barren, scorched, oddly hypnotic. Performances are raw: she’s quietly affecting, layered beneath the tics; he’s repellent yet magnetic.