A parent's worst fear is that their children will be abducted, violated and murdered. It keeps them awake at night, gnaws on the fringes of their conscience and can alter the way they look at life and the world — sometimes irreparably. "Big Bad Wolves" banks on this fear and turns it into a story so dark and brutal that the Brothers Grimm are no doubt seething with jealousy.

Directed by Israel's Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, "Big Bad Wolves" recounts the tale of a father seeking vengeance in the worst imaginable way after his 10-year-old daughter becomes the last victim in a series of child murders. The murderer not only rapes and kills, he also decapitates the girls, often while they are still alive.

Does that justify the endless and horrendous torture of the man suspected of these heinous crimes? For the father, Gidi (Tzahi Grad), the moral question is not enough to give him pause as he breaks the fingers of his suspect — a mild-mannered religious teacher named Dror (Rotem Keinan) — one by one. First Gidi drags him inside the basement of his house then begins to work him over with a hammer and other spiked or blunt instruments that are on hand. His accomplice in the matter is police detective Miki (Lior Ashkenazi), currently on suspension because he nabbed Dror without concrete evidence. But both are convinced Dror is guilty as hell.