Them
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

France, R, 77 m, 2006
Directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud. Stars Olivia Bonamy, Michaël Cohen, Adriana Mocca, et al.

Them (or Ils) is France’s contribution to the current rash of home invasion thrillers, which includes Michael Hanecke’s challenging Funny Games and Bryan Bertino’s efficient but pitiless The Strangers. Like The Strangers, Them is based on actual events, but that hardly justifies its existence. There isn’t a blasted thing in this lurid account that serves to edify the audience; it’s a cunningly shaped piece of sadism and nothing more. Them doesn’t recompense its story’s victims (or its viewers, who may be the real victims here) for their pain and suffering; things end on the soberest of notes without even an allusion to the sun coming up tomorrow. Don’t misunderstand: I’ve always been a big scary movie enthusiast (this admission often gets raised eyebrows from some of the more snobby members of my company, but I don’t think I need to justify my infatuation with the genre to them any more than I need to account for the thing I have for Italian neo-realism), so my dissatisfaction with Them does not point to an inability to dig on this kind of show. Quite the opposite: I expect great things from it.

The technical skill with which horror films are being made these days (not to mention the sheer volume in which they’re getting turned out) might lead you to think that you’re living in the genre’s golden age, but the sad reality is that the steaming antipathy that used to be relegated to the grindhouses has now boiled over into the mainstream. Broken, Eden Lake and The Last House in the Woods are all exceedingly well-made fright flicks, but their refusal to allow the good guys to triumph over evil suggests a disdain for moviegoers, if not all of humanity. Back in the good ol’ days of Universal monster mash, there were some parfait imbéciles who’d dismiss the protagonist’s certain victory over wickedness as so much Pollyannaish bunkum, but contemporary mavens of horror who share that opinion have gone and turned the doggedness of evil into just another cliché. In this day and age, having the wrongdoer actually pay for his sins would be considered a novel twist. Well, Them isn’t interested in giving that idea a go; it makes damn certain that its heroes’ struggles are all for naught.

Following a Hitchcockian bit of business that properly whets our appetite for a slammin’ scare-fest, Them introduces us to the luckless couple who will be spending the next hour or better running for their lives. A nice-looking schoolmarm, Clémentine (Olivia Bonamy), and her writer boyfriend, Lucas (Michaël Cohen), share a home in—you guessed it—the middle of Timbuktu. The joint’s something of a fixer, but it’s also so impossibly huge that it could be converted into a hotel that would make The Overlook seem like a Motel 6. Of course, giving Clem and Lucas lots and lots and lots of rooms to hide in after a gang of crazies infiltrates their house adds visual interest and helps to keep things moving. (The picture loses much of its uncanny atmosphere when the action shifts to the great outdoors.) Directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud are happy to rely on stock scare tactics, but they have a couple of new tricks up their sleeves, too. The first-rate score by René-Marc Bini is used sparingly; the filmmakers know that stone-cold silence is far more effective in bringing out far-off rattles and creaking floorboards. They’re also smart enough to keep the identity of the intruders obscured until we reach the end of the line. I must say, that big reveal proves to be anything but comforting, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that we just wasted the last hour or better of our lives rooting for a couple that never had a chance of making it through the rain in the first place. 

August 5, 2009

© Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.