“La Casa Lobo— an Experience” - Jack Dorfman '28 & Layla Kolahi '27

A multicultural fever dream on steroids.

On a rainy Wednesday last week, we got a ride with Rex back to Layla’s couch, where we ate Trader Joe’s kimbap and watched the weirdest, creepiest, most obscure Spanish-German animated stop-motion film, titled La Casa Lobo (The Wolf House).

Right off the bat, we had never seen anything like this. We had seen other stop-motion films, but La Casa Lobo carried a mysterious quirk unlike anything we had experienced. The art constantly shifted from 2D to 3D: from paintings on a wall to clay, papier-mâché, and puppets. Almost all of the dialogue was whispered, frequently switching between German and Spanish. 

If you are into cinema that makes you think or prompts you to watch a Youtube video explaining a film, then this is the perfect movie for you. We like to describe it as an international mix between Donnie Darko and Over the Garden Wall. 

La Casa Lobo is a 2018 horror film directed by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña. The film presents itself as a dark fairy tale, unfolding through an unsettling, constantly shifting animation style that uniquely uses 2D paintings, claymation, and paper-mâché figures. 

The story follows María, a young girl who escapes from a strict German cult in Chile. Seeking refuge in an isolated house in the woods, she soon realizes that the house is alive, unstable, and shaped by her fears and memories. As María attempts to live inside the house, the environment becomes totally uninhabitable, and she is haunted by an ominous, unseen presence—the Wolf, a metaphor for the psychological control of the cult she fled. 

We didn’t do our research prior to watching the film, so we didn’t know any of this. In fact, to fully grasp how confusing this movie-watching experience was, we narrated the film’s activity as we watched, to try and make sense of the content before us:

Jack: It’s the start of the movie and we've seen this house that is fully blank. Then, slowly furniture starts appearing as paint on the wall.

Layla: A religious VHS video about honey.

Jack: Maria just became physical. 

Layla: Maria can make things out of thin air and has control over the house.

Jack: The wolf that Maria is scared of calls her a bird. 

Layla: Maria is growing older, and the two pigs who Maria is the mother of are now real children.

Screenshot of La Casa Lobo (2018)

Looking back at our conversations during the movie, it makes sense that we couldn't really wrap our heads around what was happening. However, not fully understanding a film can almost make it more captivating, leaving you to want to watch more.  

Many horror movies today are too obvious with their messages and themes, leaving little room for interpretation or intellectual curiosity. This film, despite its eerie nature, is refreshingly stimulating. It invites viewers to reflect on what they just watched, explore Chilean history and culture, and appreciate the true beauty of cinema—the ability to transport us into unfamiliar realities. In this case, that reality is a deeply unsettling Chilean house, where furniture materializes out of thin air, pigs turn into children, and an all-knowing wolf lurks in the shadows.

Screencap from La Casa Lobo (2018)