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If a disaster film like “The Day After Tomorrow,” with its state of the art special effects, had the intellect and emotional frailty of Micheal Haneke’s new film “Time of the Wolf,” another disaster film, in a sense, it might have an unheard of effect on an audience, possibly too strong to deal with.

“ Time of the Wolf” is an incredible film. Something goes terribly wrong, and we watch a group of people deal with it. The audience never finds out exactly what happened, but we know it’s bad. We know society has broken down and supplies are no longer available. We know it happened fast. But we don’t know what happened, and it doesn’t matter.

Within the first few minutes, Isabella Huppert, playing a mother of a teenage girl and a pre-teen boy, witnesses her husband shot to death by a vagrant. We don’t know why this man is in their cottage with his wife and son, but you aren’t given much time to wonder before he lays waste to the husband and sends Huppert and her children out into this new, post apocalyptic world. Old friends and neighbors will not let them in. They are forced to sleep in a barn. Only one woman will give them any food, claiming that Huppert was always right with her, and mentioning that her husband would kill her if he knew she was parting with the precious pieces of sustenance.

Eventually the three end up at an old factory, in the company of some strangers who are waiting for a train to come along. They figure they can bribe their way onto the next passing train. Where it would take them, one can only guess. Away, is probably the best answer. But in the mean time, there is very little drinking water, hardly any food, and not much to do.

This is somewhat familiar territory for disaster films, but Haneke has a subtle way of dealing with it that makes it seem a little bit more uncomfortable and real than the typical formula. The selfish one of the group, the one that comes closest to destroying everything, usually played by an upper class white male with shifty eyes and a twitchy nature who is almost always a businessman, is this time played by a young boy who has been forced to survive on his own. He figures it’s him against the world, and makes terrible decisions on his own, rather than joining with the group and being subjected to their rules. Huppert’s daughter tries desperately to get him to join the group, because deep down she feels that the boy will take care of her, but in the end, she sees him for what he is, a human who has been reduced to an animal, and she tells him, “you ruin everything.”

Huppert’s son is the character who makes the biggest transition during the film. He tries hardest to hold on to his innocence, to believe that he will eventually return to the world he knew, but in the final scene of the film, we watch the boy become a man, as he mistakenly tries to sacrifice himself to the fire, in the hopes that he will save the others. He has crossed the point of no return. He has accepted his new life and will now begin to make decisions based on what’s best for the group, for survival. He has become like the rest of them.

The pace of the film is slow and detailed. The shots are beautifully composed and say more about the characters and story than any dialogue ever could. There is hardly an inch of wasted space in any frame, and if the sound were to be turned off, I don’t believe the audience would feel lost at all. There is only a slight bit of music in the film, but it’s a nice addition. If only the massive visual splendor of a Hollywood disaster film could be combined with the devastating emotional splendor of this Austrian disaster film, we might end up being completely demolished as an audience.

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