CUB ★★★

COMBINING young characters and horror is difficult.

It’s fine to insert a sense of foreboding and elements of suspense, even minimal horror, but you can easily go too far.

There are notable success, the most obvious being The Lord of the Flies.

But the 2014 Belgian release CUB, dubbed adventure/horror, doesn’t pull it off.

It’s well made and an entertaining watch but throughout remains an uneasy mix of two approaches and, ultimately, an adult horror film.

At times it does resemble a boys’ own adventure with its story of a scout group on a field trip to a French woodland that is alleged a stalking ground for a wolf boy called Kai.

While it’s obvious from the start that something bad has occurred, the true nature of Kai’s presence and motivations remain a mystery until the end.

But then there are moments of graphic violence, including simulated animal cruelty, that almost appear to be coming from a completely different film-makers’ mind.

Where the film eventually winds up is less interesting than the journey taken by the characters, nor are the final motivations very clear with the back stories particularly bare and confusing.

It sounds like I didn’t like the film, but that’s not the case. As a horror fan, there is much to appreciate. But the film promises a balance of sensibilities that could have been much more deftly handled.