Review: 'The Zone of Interest,' a masterpiece set next door to Auschwitz, gets under the skin

What does a Nazi do on his day off? Things any of us might do, especially on a sunny afternoon: He takes the family out for a countryside picnic, watching them eat, play and splash in a river and then hiking with them back to the car. Along the way, a baby cries and squirms; her older siblings bicker on the drive home. And what a home it is, a stately villa with many rooms and a gated garden where flowers, fruits and vegetables grow in abundance. There's also a greenhouse, a swimming pool and a long concrete wall, edged with barbed wire, that only partially obstructs the family's view of the concentration camp next door.

"The Zone of Interest," the brilliantly disquieting new movie from the English writer-director Jonathan Glazer, never brings us over that camp wall. It's a horror film that keeps its horrors rigorously hidden from view. But while restrained in form and implications, "Zone" is never coy, and is surprisingly quick to disgorge, confines his narrative focus to the period between 1943 and 1944, and he grounds his spare story in the everyday rhythms and meticulously researched details of the Hösses' family life.