Rabies (Kalevet by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado (review)

Rabies may be understood as the first Israeli horror film, but it's not the only one. It is the most successful representative of a surprising wave of horror films produced in Israel since about 2009. The Israeli film industry is small, and the word 'wave' only refers in this case to four films, but since these four films increase the total of Israeli horror films ever produced to four, it accurately describes the magnitude of the situation.

As a horror fan, I was intrigued by the concept of Israeli horror, or Hebrew Horror as it came to be known, and when I heard about the upcoming productions I wrote an article in which I tried to prophesy what such films might look like. Of all the filmmakers, critics and experts I interviewed, the most interesting insights were provided by Uri Aviv, manager of Icon, an sf and fantasy film festival held in Tel Aviv. In 2009 Icon held a horror screen-writing contest. Submissions revealed that two of the subjects with which the Israeli cinema is primarily concerned - the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - were completely absent from the screenplays. Most of the submitted materials were slasher films in which homicidal maniacs were aggressive kibbutz members attacking teenagers on vacation. Apparently, what Israeli horror filmmakers are most afraid of is themselves, and particularly the dogmatic and self-effacing version of themselves offered by the kibbutz.

The absence of vampire Nazis, zombie Palestinians and other predictable scenarios is also apparent in Rabies, the first Hebrew Horror film actually produced. Reading between the lines one can observe that although the film does not deal directly with political issues, it is nonetheless very aware of its Israeli origins. Rabies started as a collaboration between a student and a teacher in Tel Aviv University's film studies department. The teacher, Aharon Keshales, is a familiar figure in the Israeli film society after working for years as a film critic before making the jump to directing. The student, Navot Papusahdo, is an avid horror enthusiast, who impressed Kashales with his first shorts, as he did the lectors at the Cannes film festival, who included one of his early films in their student competition. As their friendship grew they discovered a mutual aversion to the standard topics of Israeli cinema, which were eventually excluded from their film.

Like many young people in Israel, exposed to film and television from around the world, Keshales and Papushado were tired of the traumatic and heavy atmosphere prominent in local cinema's greatest success stories (Waltz with Bashir (Vals im Bashir; Folman 2008), Beaufort (Cedar 2007) and Ajami (Copti and Shani 2008) are the prime examples in recent years). Israeli films are sometimes very well made, very moving, very thought-provoking, but they are almost never fun. The ambition driving the creation of Rabies was to make a fun Israeli film. Strictly speaking Rabies is not really a horror film but more of a horror parody, and quite a funny one. The film follows several parallel plot lines that crash into one another in a remote forest. In the first a brother and a sister fall into a trap set by a psychopath; in the second a group of teenage tennis players make a wrong turn and become lost in the woods; in the third a forest ranger makes his daily rounds only to find all these unexpected intruders; and in the fourth two cops do everything but try to rescue anyone.

But just when everything is ready for the obligatory massacre, things get weird. The forest ranger takes out the psycho killer before he gets any killing done, and in an original twist the would-be victims start disposing of one another. The brother mistakes the ranger for the killer and kills him, two of the tennis players get into a violent romantic dispute and kill one other, and the cops sexually harass their dates before they all wander into...