Kanal

What ostensibly begins as an average war picture, full of gung-ho soldiers and citizen-enlistees, becomes a horror film of the highest degree. Kanal begins as the Polish army launches its last offensive of the Warsaw Uprising and ends with a desperate retreat through the sewers underground. The devolution of the tropes and stereotypes exhibited by the characters in the first half of Kanal provides for a greater dissonance when the second half takes hold.

Truly great horror movies rely on the idea that something is barely off – a great painting with an ugly scuff on the bottom corner. Once the characters notice the blemish, they pick at it until they peel away layer after layer, realizing that the base is rotten. The sewer sequence that ends Kanal functions in a similar way. What’s left of the original group can survive if they can stick together. However, the tunnels are dark and split into what seems like an infinite number of paths, each filled with waste and human remains that float by; the stench makes each person lightheaded and unsure of what direction they need to go; they are injured, on the run, and fast running out of hope.

Kanal is a terrifying tribute to the Polish Home Army, elegiac in its depiction of their heroism and unwilling to compromise their shared fate.