Like Fritz Lang, David Fincher or Bong Joon Ho before him, talented debut filmmaker Lado Kvataniya uses the concept of police detective vs serial killer for an excitingly stylised, macabre and haunting narrative, that ultimately revolves around the identity of an era: in this case, the late 1980s Soviet Union. With Glasnost and the end of communist rule, the West also learned of the (unsurprising) fact that there were serial killers in Russia too – the most notorious case probably that of Andrei Chikatilo, nicknamed the Rostov Ripper, or the Russian Hannibal Lecter.
Based on these and many other sources, Kvataniya and screenwriter Olga Gorodetskaya constructed an immersive psychological puzzle, jumping back and forth in time, to reveal ever new-possible motives for the actions of all the protagonists. It all starts in 1990, when Detective Issa Davydov is celebrating his promotion and receives a call, reporting a crime that looks precisely like the ones of the serial killer that he famously captured some years before ...

在儿子离奇失踪四年后，一对夫妇决定收养一名小男孩，这名小男孩刚从一间因火灾而烧毁的孤儿院中幸存。随着男孩渐长，越发神似他们失去的儿子，个性也变得诡异与暴戾，甚至开始攻击同龄小孩。尽管母亲认为这名男孩就是他们失去的儿子，但父亲深信儿子早已死去。
母亲再度怀孕，兴奋地准备迎接新生儿，被领养的男孩感觉自己遭受冷落，便开始攻击尚未出世的孩子。另方面，父亲意外发现原来当初让孤儿院深陷危机的人就是这名男孩。 ...