To celebrate Halloween Live for Films is having a horror movie review each night in the 31 Days of Horror. You can see last years 31 days here. You can be involved by sending me your review of a horror film – new, old, good, bad, depressing, funny, disgusting, psychological. As long as it can be classed as a horror then you can send it over to me at phil@liveforfilms.com
Click here to see all the reviews for 2011′s 31 Days of Horror.
Today Mark Wassmer reviews Xavier Gens’ Frontier(s).
I have to be honest and say I was sceptical about watching a French subtitled Horror film, how was I going to be able to watch the gore whilst following the story. But, I’d heard such good things about Xavier Gens’ Frontiers, something of a homage to the work of George Romero’s Zombie movies and the slasher movies of the 70′s and 80′s like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Nightmare on Elm Street. How could I not give it a go and see how it works out, worst case scenario I lose 2 hours of my day.
Set against a political backdrop where an extremist right-wing candidate is elected to the French presidency, Frontiers kicks of with a montage of news clips showing scenes of rioting political activists battling armed police on the streets of France. These clips are intercut with scenes of our lead characters Alex (Aurélien Wiik), Yasmine (Karina Testa), Sami (Adel Bencherif), Tom (David Saracino) and Farid (Chems Dahmani) all desperately trying to survive the riots, whilst escaping the police having just pulled of a robbery. Edited together in the style of a Urban decay documentary with a thumping soundtrack this isn’t your average start to a horror movie.
Having gotten enough money together to comfortably make new lives for themselves our main characters decide make a run for it to Amsterdam. Before they do this Yasmine must get medical attention for her brother who has been shot, unfortunately this means hospital, and therefore police involvement, which is the last thing they need. The only answer is to split up and meet later, Alex and Yasmine will take her brother to the hospital, whilst Tom and Farid find a safe location to stay.
As Alex and Yasmine drop Sami at the hospital Tom and Farid drive through the countryside until they stumble across a small “Inn”. Quite and secluded in the middle of nowhere, it seems like the perfect place, unfortunately what they don’t realise is that the house belongs to a family of Neo-Nazi sadistic cannibals led by former SS officer and Nazi war criminal Le Von Geisler (Jean-Pierre Jorris)
I really don’t want to give to much of the story away here, as I am sure, like me you’ll get much more out of it going in cold.
I can tell you that unlike so many horror movies this film doesn’t simply through our hapless characters at the mercy of a maniac. No, Frontiers is far too clever for that, what we have is a film that, for a time, plays out more as 2 films, not 2 halves, 2 parallel films in 1 half we have Tom and Farid trying to escape, in the other Alex and Yasmine who finally “join” the family for dinner – sorry couldn’t resist.
Frontiers isn’t for the faint hearted, director Xavier Gens is not afraid of putting it right up there on screen for all to see, no subtle off camera trickery here, none of that in the shadows or lights off horror, if you think it’s going to happen, chances are it will and even when your thinking to yourself, “no, he can’t” – he will.
This is nerve tingling stuff, in many cases cringeworthy and very uncomfortable. I like to think of myself as something of a hardand Horror fan, but it had me squirming in my seat several times. So often you can see the inevitable coming, it’s not shock horror, no quick scares to make you jump, remember that scene in Misery with Kathy Bates and the sledgehammer, think that, but time and time again.
There is one particular part that I have to highlite, if you want to stay completely spoiler free skip this paragraph. It isn’t a gory scene at all but it had me shifting on my seat for several minutes and almost broke me out in a cold sweat. The scene I am talking about is a particularly claustrophobic scene in a very tight tunnel, now I don’t class myself as claustrophobic – I watch Buried with Ryan Reynolds with no problems but this scene really played on me, I almost had to fast forward.
Frontiers is great looking film, it has a dirty grimy colour palette throughout. The scenes are framed with shaky camera work and obscure angles, the close up camerawork evokes great tension and makes you feel like you are in the thick of things, this is gritty in your face horror, with great acting from all and a fantastic story to tie it together. I’ll even go as far as saying in some instances it can be oddly beautifully, something I never thought I’d say about a horror film. One such scene is the main family dining scene, great dialogue, awesome camera work & editing brought together with an amazing soundtrack. In fact I should point our that the soundtrack is a fitting companion throughout the whole film.
I can’t say enough about Frontiers, it’s the best Horror film I’ve seen in several years, I highly recommended it, subtitles and all. Watch it, you won’t be disappointed.
