L'horreur ! French fear x 3
April 30th 2008 17:47
I didn't mean to have the focus on the French this week, I swear! It just kinda came together that I was able to see these three buzzed-about fear flicks this past week. And yes, I liked them all better than High Tension (or at least I thought they all had better endings).
Frontiere(s) (7/10)
was, for me, the lesser of the three. It concerns a group of thieves who flee to the French countryside after a score, only to wind up in the hands of...crazy mutant hillbillies? Not quite - this time it's a cannibal family of Nazis, but it won't much matter to the casual viewer; you've seen this story before (and some of us have seen it many times before). It's directed with a certain degree of style, though, and the cast seems up for the mayhem, and...who am I kidding? It's pretty f-ing bloody, and that's probably its biggest draw. So, if you can get past the lifts from other, better films (Christ, there's even an ailing grandparent crazy who has to be spoon-fed slop!), Frontiere(s) won't let you down when it comes to spraying around the red stuff. That's practically the film's raison d'etre, and the filmmakers keep their end of the bargain, and keep things moving (and bleeding).
Better, and much less gory: Them (8/10).
Them was actually pretty damn scary for a stretch, which was good enough, as the film zips by in a brisk 77 minutes. After a prologue (which has a fair degree of tension itself), we settle in with a nice young couple in what appears to be their new Money Pit of a home in the middle of nowhere. As the night grows darker, they are terrorized by someone or something of which we only get brief glimpses of for quite awhile...eerie phone calls and creepy noises are just the beginning, and then things get much worse. I found the ending rather abrupt, but by no means a letdown. Somehow I actually cared about the two leads, even with precious little in the way of character development or backstory, and unfortunately that's an achievement in and of itself in a modern horror movie. Keep the lights out and crank the surround and you may even find yourself...scared. During a horror movie? Remember that?
My favorite of the three, Inside (8/10)
is the story of a young pregnant woman who is tormented on a holiday evening by a deranged lady who wants the baby that's, umm...inside her. That's pretty much all you need to know. Oh, and it's violent as hell. You'd think that one lady chasing another around a house for an hour-and-a-half couldn't really be all that entertaining (or involving), but boy is it ever; and, like Frontiere(s), it's the sort of film where you'll see something so gory and/or over-the-top that you'll keep watching just to see what the hell comes next.
It kind of slips away into outright, batsh-t craziness by the end, but I didn't really care.
Each of these three films are better than a lot of the crap that's being cranked out here in the US lately, so if you're looking for a change of pace from all the sh-t remakes and junk that's out there, check 'em out.
Frontiere(s) (7/10)
was, for me, the lesser of the three. It concerns a group of thieves who flee to the French countryside after a score, only to wind up in the hands of...crazy mutant hillbillies? Not quite - this time it's a cannibal family of Nazis, but it won't much matter to the casual viewer; you've seen this story before (and some of us have seen it many times before). It's directed with a certain degree of style, though, and the cast seems up for the mayhem, and...who am I kidding? It's pretty f-ing bloody, and that's probably its biggest draw. So, if you can get past the lifts from other, better films (Christ, there's even an ailing grandparent crazy who has to be spoon-fed slop!), Frontiere(s) won't let you down when it comes to spraying around the red stuff. That's practically the film's raison d'etre, and the filmmakers keep their end of the bargain, and keep things moving (and bleeding).
Them was actually pretty damn scary for a stretch, which was good enough, as the film zips by in a brisk 77 minutes. After a prologue (which has a fair degree of tension itself), we settle in with a nice young couple in what appears to be their new Money Pit of a home in the middle of nowhere. As the night grows darker, they are terrorized by someone or something of which we only get brief glimpses of for quite awhile...eerie phone calls and creepy noises are just the beginning, and then things get much worse. I found the ending rather abrupt, but by no means a letdown. Somehow I actually cared about the two leads, even with precious little in the way of character development or backstory, and unfortunately that's an achievement in and of itself in a modern horror movie. Keep the lights out and crank the surround and you may even find yourself...scared. During a horror movie? Remember that?
is the story of a young pregnant woman who is tormented on a holiday evening by a deranged lady who wants the baby that's, umm...inside her. That's pretty much all you need to know. Oh, and it's violent as hell. You'd think that one lady chasing another around a house for an hour-and-a-half couldn't really be all that entertaining (or involving), but boy is it ever; and, like Frontiere(s), it's the sort of film where you'll see something so gory and/or over-the-top that you'll keep watching just to see what the hell comes next.
It kind of slips away into outright, batsh-t craziness by the end, but I didn't really care.
Each of these three films are better than a lot of the crap that's being cranked out here in the US lately, so if you're looking for a change of pace from all the sh-t remakes and junk that's out there, check 'em out.
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Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I only just got hold of DVDs of Them and Inside, and am still waiting to order Frontiere(s), wasn't sure if it would get a down under release.
I resisted reading your reviews (i'd prefer to go in as cold as possible, if you get my drift), apart from seeing that you gave high ratings for all three.
Comment by Josh S