Polish film production is increasing in quality every year, as evidenced by the growing number of Polish original titles in Netflix’s library.
Their latest collaboration this week introduced a brutal crime thriller, “Colors of Evil: Red,” which quickly shot to the top of the most-watched titles shortly after its release.
Directed by Adrian Panek, this extraordinarily dark crime film is based on the first book of the trilogy by author Małgorzata Oliwia Sobczak. According to Sobczak, she was inspired by a true story about a man who murdered a twenty-three-year-old religious studies student in Krakow and subsequently skinned her. The plot unfolds in a quiet coastal town in 1996, where events are set in motion when the sea washes ashore the corpse of a young girl, the daughter of a well-known judge (Zofia Jastrzębska).
The investigation later reveals a connection to another female victim murdered 15 years earlier. The subsequent clues uncovered by young ambitious prosecutor Leopold Bilski (Jakub Gierszał) gradually suggest that an exceptionally brutal serial killer is at large in the town, who keeps the lips of his victims as trophies.
The Polish crime thriller does not hide its inspiration from Hollywood films, often surpassing them with its brutal form and explicit violence against women. Sensitive viewers are advised to avoid this film. While “Colors of Evil: Red” may lack distinct originality, it compensates with pervasive tension that accompanies the viewer throughout the nearly two-hour film. In the past, Polish cinema captured audiences with the raw authenticity of the football hooligan drama “Furioza” and kept fans awake at night with the brutal occult horror “Hellhole.”
