Steppenwolf Blu-Ray Review
Arrow Video Releases STEPPENWOLF: A Blood-Soaked Fever Dream
Polish those heart-shaped sunglasses—and spare us the tired Borat jokes—because Arrow Video is unleashing pure chaos from Kazakhstan. On May 27, 2025, the boutique label drops a must-own limited-edition Blu-ray of Steppenwolf, the latest blood-slicked wasteland requiem from Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov.
Known for blending arthouse allegory with grindhouse brutality, Yerzhanov leans into the latter here. This one’s not for the faint of heart.
Set in a decaying dystopia that looks like it was scorched by war and then left to rot, Steppenwolf follows Tamara (a challenging performance from Anna Starchenko), a grief-stricken mother in search of her kidnapped son, Timka. With no leads, she turns to Brajyuk (a deranged, mesmerizing Berik Aitzhanov), a former cop turned nihilistic mercenary, aka “confession specialist” whose methods range from sadistic to absurd. You never know what Brajyuk will do next—or why. One moment he cracks a joke, the next he’s reaching for a hammer. Is he about to bludgeon someone or break into a mamba lesson? The unpredictability keeps you on edge in the best (and worst) possible ways.
What follows is a brutalist road movie drenched in violence and laced with surrealism. It’s a twisted odyssey through towns run by riot squads, corrupt officials, and gangsters who steal children’s organs. Brajyuk exploits Tamara to settle his vendetta against a ruthless gangster, dragging her through a harrowing gauntlet of violence, madness, and emotional devastation. He unleashes his nihilistic fury on a world that’s long abandoned morality.
Yerzhanov has created something that’s a mix of George Miller, Jean-Pierre Melville, and a spaghetti western on bath salts. One moment, Tamara is being used as a human mirror during a shootout. The next, Brajyuk is dancing a jig during a convoy massacre —with zero emotional fallout.
The film also features cryptic, esoteric hand gestures, offbeat stoicism, and philosophical nihilism borrowed from Hermann Hesse’s original Steppenwolf. Hesse’s novel explored the fractured soul and the war between one’s civilized self and inner beast—Yerzhanov’s version is that idea made flesh in Brajyuk, who vacillates between cynical philosopher, and indifferent killer.
Director Adilkhan Yerzhanov is an auteur on the rise and has made a name for himself as one of Kazakhstan’s most daring and prolific filmmakers. A disciple of both American action cinema and French existentialism, his filmography includes Yellow Cat, Goliath, and The Gentle Indifference of the World. Whether it’s about corrupt cops, delusional cinephiles, or gun-toting anti-heroes, Yerzhanov’s work interrogates moral decay with an artistic edge.
Steppenwolf continues that trajectory, stripping away sentiment in favor of raw power. It’s his grimiest, most brutal, and weirdly magnetic film to date—and arguably his most accessible for fans of violent revenge cinema.
Berik Aitzhanov as Brajyuk is a revelation—a flehmen grimacing death machine in heart-shaped shades. He flits between helping and humiliating Tamara, laughing one minute and smashing skulls the next. He’s the embodiment of chaos, pushing Tamara to stand up for herself, then treating her pain like a joke. He’ll mock her sorrow with a smirk, then captivate you with a haunting monologue by the fire.
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Starchenko, meanwhile, plays a shell-shocked Tamara, who’s like a broken record stuck on one track—relentlessly moving forward, no matter how deeply the blood pools around her feet. Her quiet stillness makes the violence around her feel louder, more haunting. To be fair, Starchenko wasn’t given much to work with—Tamara isn’t a richly developed character. This isn’t a film that flatters feminist ideals but, as other critics have noted, it serves as a stark meditation on masculinity in crisis within a decaying society. Within those constraints, Starchenko’s performance feels deliberate, even experimental, playing trauma with a quiet intensity that’s as unsettling as it is effective.
This is a dark horse feature that has a lot of buzz. It’s already achieved a cult-like status, so if this type of dark story grabs you where the hammer just smashed you, I’d jump on the pre-order from Arrow Video ASAP:
Steppenwolf Blu-ray Release: A Must for Collectors
Arrow’s Limited Edition Blu-ray includes:
- Steppenwolf and Yerzhanov’s earlier film Goliath (first time in the U.S.)
- 1080p HD presentations, DTS HD-MA 5.1 audio
- English and optional Spanish subtitles
- A new commentary by David Flint
- Visual essay on its post-western influences
- 15-minute making-of featurette
- A collector’s booklet with new interviews
- Reversible sleeve with new art
Final Verdict
Steppenwolf isn’t just a movie—it’s a blast crater of a film. It shocks, disturbs, and somehow still entertains. It’s perfect for those who want cinema that kicks them in the teeth and then hands them a cigarette. Recommended if you’re into movies like Mad Max: Fury Road, Hard to Be a God, and Come and See.
This is also a film about the futility of brutality, a meditation on surviving in a world where survival itself may not even be worth it. It asks, “Is good even necessary?” Why fight fair when fairness is extinct? In a savage jungle, why not embrace the beast? By the end, you won’t have merely watched a film, you’ll feel like you crawled out on your hands and knees, every inch scraped raw by the experience, leaving behind a trail of jagged emotional scars.
