Them
2005, France/Romania, Directed by David Moreau, Xavier Palud
Colour, Running Time: 74 minutes
DVD, Region 2, Metrodome, Video: Anamorphic 2.35:1, Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Them (or, in its original title, Ils) opens in Romania near Bucharest with a fairly conventional shocker scene where a mother and daughter crash at the side of the road, unable to get their car going again. Taking a look at the engine the mother mysteriously vanishes, her daughter deducing that someone or something has emerged from the woods to kidnap the woman. Minutes of tension pass before the daughter is brutally murdered by the unseen assailant(s). We then catch up with Clémentine, a French tutor teaching in one of the Romanian schools; Clementine is an reasonably content, attractive woman and just heading off to the countryside to spend some time with her boyfriend Lucas, a budding writer. The house is isolated and in a state of dilapidation but functioning as a home while the couple themselves seem happy together. Some time during the night they’re awoken by noises outside: someone is stealing their car. Lucas tries to give chase but fails to catch up with the thief. They then realise that their house is being invaded and their lives are under genuine threat, thus beginning a chase from persistently unseen homicidal attackers in a desperate bid to survive.
Early on a forceful degree of tension is established and to an extent maintained as the directors intuitively keep their perpetrators of evil mostly anonymous, an unusual tactic in today’s cinematic world of the ‘show everything’ ethos. It is of course an approach that often works supremely well, but one that presumably induces boredom in younger generations given its sparsity nowadays. The real risk obviously arises when the unidentified terror is not revealed until the very end - tension can be difficult to maintain over feature length without occasional payoffs in the form of small revelations. The makers here have sidestepped that problem by keeping the running time to a minimum - little over an hour and ten minutes - while keeping the suspense cranked up as high as they possibly can. The fear of domestic invasion is quite universal and therein lies their ticket to success, along with the opening claim that Them/Ils is based on a true story giving its terrors some authentic validation (assuming of course that the claim itself is truthful). The central performances by Olivia Bonamy and Michaël Cohen are proficient and involving, the actors being professionals but little known outside of their native country (France). The writer/director team of Palud and Moreau are inexperienced but manage a thoroughly professional job, constructing a traditionally crafted film that rises above its low budget trappings (despite being shot on video). I have no desire to give away the way this story winds up, but initial suspicions that this would turn out to be yet another slasher proved unfounded - the denouement sent a shiver through my body that lasted for several minutes after finishing the film as I contemplated what I’d just witnessed. Wrapped up in what appears to be a relatively standard horror movie is a genuinely chilling comment about modern day society that may well resonate with anybody who dwells within it, and you don’t have to live in Romania to worry. The final shot is one that is so grounded in normality that the abominable occurrences that precede it are only emphasised in their ghastliness. Watch this film without any preconceptions other than to come away with chilled blood and thoroughly disturbed.
Being shot on video gives way to results that I hate the look of. The makers have managed to disguise it quite well, however, and some may not realise they’re watching something other than film (on DVD of course), but the telltale signs are there, specifically with inadequate response to light. It can be argued that the grittiness of the image works in the story’s favour though, much as it did for Blair Witch Project. The DVD consequently looks very rough and grainy, with muddy colours. The surround track does provide an enveloping experience, taking the deliberately unnerving sound mix that Palud and Moreau use to their full advantage and placing you right in the middle of a pretty frightening sound field, cracks, bumps a strange noises coming from any direction. Most of the audio track contains French dialogue (with English subtitles reasonably executed) so we’ll probably be seeing an American remake of this in the next couple of years due to the widespread mental laziness that prevails when it comes to having to use certain parts of the brain whilst watching film, but I think you’d be doing yourself an injustice simply waiting for that. It’s all the more ironic, therefore, that the two directors have since found themselves working on an Americanised remake of another successful foreign horror film (The Eye, due in cinemas soon).