Netflix’s Polish thriller drama, Hound’s Hill, proceeds at the pace of a slow burner, handling multiple issues involving the small town of Zybork, which range from the covering up of diabolical crimes to state corruption being embedded into the general consciousness, dysfunctional family ties, extreme justice, and the threat of displacement communities sometimes face at the hands of seedy real estate tycoons and corporates—but at the end the five-episode miniseries fumbles hard while carrying the burden of its own. A grim, dark undertone marks the narrative theme of the series, and there is a certain foreboding effect present since the beginning of the first episode, and none of that is justified by the ludicrous ending of the miniseries, which ties up every plot point with haste. While the acting, to some extent the cinematography, and the chilling background score seem to stick with viewers for a while, I am not sure whether that warrants spending five hours on a predictable, unimaginative slog-fest.
Spoilers Ahead
What Really Happened On That Fateful Night?
The beginning of Hound’s Hill takes viewers to 18 years before the series’ present timeline in the town of Zybork. The story focuses on a severely intoxicated teenager, Mikolaj, who is left heartbroken after his girlfriend, Daria, decided to part ways with him and is comforted by his father, Tomek. According to Tomek, Mikolaj should not spend time loitering with his present company, who are apparently a bad influence on him, and should find a better way to build his life and career.
Things go awry the next morning, when Tomek and Mikolaj are informed by Filip Bernat that Daria has been found raped and murdered, and the alleged perpetrator is her mentally unstable brother, Gizmo, who acted under the influence and ended up taking his sister’s life. Mikolaj is devastated after this tragedy and pushes himself further into a hedonistic lifestyle of addiction, resulting in a rift with his old man. In the present, Mikolaj has left his hometown and is living in Warsaw with his investigative journalist wife, Justyna. Mikolaj has made a fortune as a bestselling author by writing about his hometown, portraying the world he left as hellish, corrupted, and beyond redemption. However, Mikolaj decides to return to Zybork with his wife after he receives a postcard from Gizmo regarding the truth of what really transpired on that fateful night—and in the process, tries to make amends with his father. Gizmo, who had spent the last 18 years in a solitary ward of a mental asylum, is unable to write a single sentence, let alone blackmail someone by sending postcards, which indicates someone else is aware of the truth Mikolaj is trying to escape from. Additionally, after meeting Mikolaj for the first time in decades, Gizmo ends up taking his own life, which further strengthens Mikolaj’s suspicion that the poor guy had nothing to do with his sister’s demise. Throughout the five episodes, several flashback scenes, confessions from Father Bernat, and Gizmo’s memories of the night reveal the harrowing truth.
The company Mikolaj kept, his friends Jarecki, Macius, and Marek, had forcibly intoxicated Gizmo with booze and drugs on that particular night at the nightclub. After finding out about this, Daria had publicly lashed out at Mikolaj and decided to take her brother back home, when Jarecki, Macius, and Marek took Daria away and sexually assaulted her, beating her to death. Gizmo, who found the lifeless corpse of his sister, was framed as the culprit—most probably by Filip Bernat himself, who wanted to save his son, Marek, from getting thrown into prison. Now there is a clear indication that Mikolaj was aware of the truth; possibly in his intoxicated state, he himself could have been a participant in the heinous crime, given he hallucinates Daria’s presence ever since returning to the town. Most probably, the shock of the truth resulted in Mikolaj receding into complete denial, and he decided to deliberately forget about the incident altogether until the postcards brought him back to Zybork and jogged his memories. It is later revealed that it was Kaska, sister of Gizmo and Daria, who held a grudge against Mikolaj for libeling the township and its residents in his book, and although she didn’t know the truth, she wanted to rattle Mikolaj from his apathetic existence. At the same time, Kaska was also probably infatuated with Mikolaj as well, as after all is said and done, we see Mikolaj and Kaska ending up as a couple.
Justyna’s Help Strengthens Tomek’s Position in Zybork
Mikolaj’s wife, Justyna, a competent investigative journalist, ends up getting entangled in Zybork’s ongoing conflict between the native residents and the coalition of seedy corporates regarding the future of Zybork colony. The town’s mayor, Burmistrzyni; police chief, Dobocinski; Kalt, a greedy realtor; and Topek, the Romani gangster, were working together to get the German investor, Vaivode, to completely transform the township into a tourist spot, ignoring the cultural significance of the land and the need for better infrastructure for the residents. In order to forcibly seize the land of the native residents, this shady group was willing to stoop to any low. Tomek postured himself as a righteous community leader who was prepared to take the battle to the greedy and powerful calling the shots, and he even tried to evoke the nationalism of the townsfolk by appealing to them to stand against the aggressive takeover of the German investor. When Tomek’s good friend, Filip Bernat’s corpse was found, along with the news of his son Marek going missing, Tomek was quick to direct public suspicion towards Kalt and co., as Filip’s land had been on their sights for a long time. Given the fact that town police chief Dobocinski was unwilling to engage in a thorough investigation on this matter due to obvious reasons, it resulted in Tomek doubling down on his effort to oppose the dastardly group. Taking his daughter-in-law, Justyna, with him, Tomek appealed to the senses of the people by storming the town hall, raising his voice against the aggressor in Filip’s funeral.
Now, quite naturally, Tomek’s actions resulted in grave repercussions: his house suffered an arson attack, his family was targeted, and he was imprisoned on suspicion of being involved in Filip’s death. Justyna, a straight-arrow journalist who has previously handled significant cases involving political conspiracies, was greatly inspired by Tomek’s actions and wanted to see justice being served to the townsfolk of Zybork. Also, she was able to identify the potential of a great story in a rural community’s resistance against corporate and authoritative aggression, which is why she got herself involved in this crisis, so much so that she went on to threaten the Attorney General of Poland by using the incriminating intel she had on him to coerce him to spare Tomek and his family from the misery. Justyna truly believed that Tomek was fighting the good fight and was willing to assist him by any means necessary. It was Justyna’s support as a journalist that allowed Tomek to take control of the township in the end, after her report on Zybork’s corruption resulted in the mayor stepping down.
In the meantime, Justyna and Mikolaj’s relationship hit a rough patch after Mikolaj discovered Justyna’s extramarital affair with her editor and lashed out at her. For a long time Mikolaj had been struggling with addiction, and during that period, to cope with her loneliness, Justyna found herself engaged in a physical relationship with her editor. After learning of this betrayal, Mikolaj, who had lived a sober life for the last five years, found himself relapsing. Also, returning to Zybork brought up all the memories and faces he wanted to forget, which didn’t help his case either. Being an accomplice of a heinous crime and still pleading innocence by twisting the narrative through penning his memories, Mikolaj sure had to be daring to blame his wife for cheating when he was far worse a person. Anyway, Mikolaj was abducted after reverting to his old ways, and as Justyna tried to search for her husband, she too met the same fate when the truth about the town’s shady past came to light.
Did Justyna learn the truth at the end?
In Hound’s Hill’s ending, Tomek had learned about the truth behind Daria’s death from Father Bernat’s confession and had had Filip and his son Marek killed—to serve his own sense of justice. As the finale showcases, Tomek brought his son, Mikolaj, to witness the final fate of the perpetrators. Macius and Jarecki were brought to the dilapidated remains of a house in Hound’s Hill at the town’s outskirts, and Father Bernat, who remained silent despite knowing the truth all along, was dragged in as a culprit as well. Justyna watched in horror as Mikolaj took the rifle from his father to shoot his friend, Macius, to death, and his action can be interpreted as him finally shedding the guise of innocence and accepting his true self, or his final attempt to ‘man up’ and win his father’s approval. Justyna was spared by Tomek and co., as they believed that, given how much she has helped to support Tomek’s campaign against corporates and outsiders, no one would believe the truth even if she decides to expose them later on. The house at Hound’s Hill burns with the rest of the perpetrators inside, and the dark clad old lady, whom Gizmo too saw in his intoxication induced vision, is clarified to be the angel of death.Â
Three months after the incident, Justyna has returned to her life in Warsaw; she has found comfort in the presence of her editor as she receives an award for her latest article, which exposed Zybork’s corruption. But she knows that she has rescued the town from evil corporations only to deliver the control to regressive, violent men who will subject the township to their own form of justice—there is no lesser evil in this regard. Tomek, on the other hand, has Kalt, Topek, and even the police chief by his side, and all of them are well aware of the power he has. Mikolaj is now in a relationship with Kaska, which is disturbing given how he himself was responsible for the sordid fate of her siblings, appears to have found peace being his father’s lapdog, but as the series ends, we see his addiction has gotten the better of him after all. Perhaps the truth of what he truly is was too burdensome for a frail coward like him to face, and with the only person who could have helped him cope with his pain, Justyna, leaving his side for all the right reasons, he lost his grip on reality and is now headed towards inevitable doom. The town celebrates after being liberated from the clutches of capitalistic endeavors, being blissfully unaware of the monstrous forces that are at the center of the power.Â
