Prey (2010)

Three generations of the Lefevre family go into the woods; only one Lefevre comes back out!

(At right: Grandpa says, “Look at the size of that porker!” Later, Grandpa becomes a boar snack…)

I normally like French horror films, but 2010’s ‘Prey’ (original title ‘Proie’) was less than satisfying simply because it stuck too closely to ‘there is a big critter out there and the hunters have become the hunted!’ without transcending any of these standard tropes. Since Prey was Antoine Blossier’s first film, perhaps his producers did not let him take a lot of chances; I’ll be interested to see what this director does next because I think the film was very competently made. Most of my complaints are that the story ‘played it safe’ and we pretty much knew what was going to happen early on in the film.

The Lefevre family owns an old farm that has been in the family for generations and a brand new chemical fertilizer business. Deer are found mutilated on the property, and a wild boar of enormous size is suspected. Accompanied by their daughter’s fiance (who is a doctor), the Lefevre men set off to hunt down the wild pig. Did I mention there is a lot of tension in the family? Apparently the older generation dislike the newfangled fertilizer business and the grown son who started the fertilizer business thinks his father and brother don’t appreciate his hard work and all of the money he has made for them. The doctor fiance resents the fact that his future father-in-law doesn’t want his daughter, a chemist, to leave the fertilizer business to get married. Despite the fact that his daughter is pregnant, he tells the fiance that “there will always be time for children later.” Clearly, dad is a douche (even Uncle and Grandpa think so).

There is a file of secret reports of some kind that fertilizer father and chemist daughter keep passing back and forth and the doctor future son-in-law notices chemical burns on the skin of the grandfather, plus there are frequent closeups of the chemical handling pumps and manufacturing plant, implying that all is not on the up-and-up in the Lefevre fertilizer business but douche-bag fertilizer father insists that his daughter keep it a secret.

The men head off into the woods to hunt the boar… but, in a series of events that a blind man could have seen coming a mile off we discover that the boars are mutated and evil and agressive due to some chemical shit that the douchebag son has contaminated the lake with in his desire to ‘remain competative’ in the fertilizer business. The hunters become the hunted and half of the movie takes place in the woods at night.

We never really get a good look at the giant wild pigs that are killing off the Lefevres and I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. One of my favorite horror films, Alien, almost never showed us the monsters, so the few times we did see it, it had a lot more impact… and I think Prey was opperating under the same principle… but the glimpses of boar’s heads, noses and tusks that we get just don’t look that convincing or scary. The only scene that made me sad is when the uncle’s dog gets killed by one of the mutant pigs but when ‘Dutch’ the dog was introduced at the start of the film, we pretty much knew it was just a matter of time.

Black Death (2010) Movie Review

Black Death (2010) is a “historical” thriller set in Medieval England (14th century?) during the worst years of the black plague.

The Premise: A young monk named Osmund has fallen in love with a woman named Avril. A hard hearted and dogmatic knight named Ulrich (played by Sean Bean) arrives at the monastery and demands a guide to a remote village which is supposed to be mysteriously free of the plague. Heresey and witchcraft is suspected. Ulrich’s job is to investigate and execute any “necromancers” using any means he deems necessary. Since the swamp is in the same direction as the place where Osmund’s girlfriend is to be found, Osmund believes this is a sign from God that he ought to leave the monastery and go to be with her; he agrees to guide Ulrich and his mercenaries (complete with a wagon load of torture devices) to the swamp.

Eventually they arrive at the remote village where everything is not what it seems and horrible events unfold. Spoiler: Oswald is reunited with his love, but the reunion is not a happy one. The movie starts off bleak and ends bleaker.

The film is of modest budget (by current Hollywood standards) but the film makers do a lot with what they have. It looks like most or all of the film was shot on locations in Germany using period structures instead of building sets (and, other than one scene in which I noticed a decidedly non-period glass window in the background, this gives the film a gritty feel you probably couldn’t get from picture perfect sets). The color is intentionally desaturated and the air filled with smoke and haze while wretched looking peasants and hard looking mercenaries slop through the mud. There are no big-budget special effects and the fight scenes in the film are brutal rather than heroic. The music is spare and the dialogue terse.

The film is a thriller and seeks to set up the viewer’s expectations only to knock them down. At first the viewer thinks that Ulrich and his inquisitors must be the villains, but by the end you are not so sure. It might be ‘Name of the Rose’ meets ‘Apocalypse Now’ with a cupful of ‘The Stepford Wives’ in terms of story. Well worth a watch.

Descent 2 review

I didn’t see the original ‘Descent,’ but bouts of insomnia coupled with a Netflix membership that allows me to watch some of the netflix catalog online results in a situation where I end up seeing some films that I might otherwise have never rented. Descent 2 is (obviously) a sequel to the 2005 Descent movie and apparently takes place shortly after the events of the first film.

Descent 2 is a good (but not a great) horror film, but if you are a ‘Dungeoncrawl’ enthusiast, you might want to rent it just to see some of the rather effective claustrophobic underground scenes where something is stalking a group of humans who have set out to rescue another group of spelunkers who have gotten lost in a maze of underground caves.

The film begins with a bloodied woman named Sarah wandering into a wilderness road somewhere in the rural US (perhaps in Appalachia?) and nearly being hit by a passing truck. After law enforcement is informed, it is determined that this woman (who is in a state of shock) is the member of a group of spelunkers who entered a cave several miles away(thus, she is a survivor of the events of the first Descent movie). Another team has been searching the cave system with some urgency; time is running out for the missing cavers. Not all of the blood on Sarah’s clothes is her own; the sheriff suspects she may have attacked her partners. An abandoned mine is known to be in the area in which Sarah was found; the rescue team speculates that if Sarah got out through the mine, perhaps they can find her companions by entering the cave system through the mine. A local whose grandfather worked in the mine tells them that the old miners spoke of having found a link to a series of seemingly endless caverns in the course of their diggings and a group of miners entered the caves to explore but were never heard from again. The sheriff, his deputy, an expert caver and his two assistants all enter the mine. Although Sarah claims to be unable to remember anything, the Sheriff insists on taking her along, perhaps because he thinks she will be able to help them retrace her steps to her lost comrades.

Of course, it all goes screwy. After finding a video camera lost by the first expedition, they review the tape and see the first group being attacked by something or someone in the caves. Things go from bad to worse; Sarah panics and runs off, the group gets split up and soon the would-be rescuers are in need of rescuing themselves.

The caving scenes are quite effective at portraying the claustrophobia and confusion of getting lost in a cave where unknown enemies may be lurking, making this good inspirational material for the dungeoneering crowd. The characters are not particularly memorable or well developed, but they seldom are in horror so that should come as no big surprise. The film ends, like most horror movies, somewhat ambiguously; thus the producers have the possibility of a ‘Descent 3‘ on the table.

I was entertained enough that I will probably hunt down the original Descent movie for watching, although I suspect it would probably be more fun to watch them in order.

Frontiers (Movie: 2007)

Frontiers is a 2007 French horror movie directed by someone named Xavier Gens and starring a bunch of people we don’t know in the US because the only French actor Americans have heard of is Gerard Depardieu and he is not in this. I heard someone call it “The French Deliverance” — but its not at all like Deliverance. There are no hillbillies who rape canoeists, but there are neo-nazi cannibals. There is no river but there are some creepy mines, a pig farm, a shoot out with automatic weapons and a weird hotel. There is a lot of blood and corpses and other stuff. At one point one of the evil people turns on a table saw… and as soon as the saw blade starts to spin you just know someone is going to get ripped apart on it… and in this way the director does not disappoint. In fact, you get to see people get shot, stabbed, broiled, beaten, etc., throughout the film. If you like violent slasher films with high production values, this is the film for you (providing you speak French or can read subtitles). It is like Deliverance in one respect: at the end of the film, everyone is either emotionally destroyed or dead.

The movie starts with some disillusioned young men (and one woman) who have taken advantage of the confusion from a riot in Paris to pull some sort of heist — what sort of heist is not explained, but they have a bag full of money. The cops are after them so they decide to get out of Paris while they can and end up at a Hotel which is obviously not listed in the Michelin guide. Here, after a strange sexual encounter the creepy occupants of the hotel and our erstwhile heroes come into extremely bloody conflict — the gore in this film goes from wince-worthy guy getting shot in the hand to ridiculous who-turned-on-the-firehose jets of blood. There were a few horrific scenes that really had me wincing (including one where a poor guy is suspended upside-down by means of hooks right through his feet — ouch! — and a really mean old nazi does something particularly horrible with a pair of pincers).

I think the movie is not particularly well known in the US, I guess because a) most people in the US who are willing to see a movie in which meat hooks and table saws figure prominently don’t want to have to read subtitles to find out what is happening, and, b) the film got an NC-17 rating which is apparently the kiss of death for theater distribution.

Not for the squeamish or faint of heart… but I’d recommend it.