Pretty Pink Patty's Pictures

I understand that there is some sort of horror film festival in the States (not quite like the FrightFest that I attend here) called "Eight Films to Die For" or some such which gathers together new entries and then churns them out onto DVD.  I believe that the above French movie was meant to be included in last year's fest, but was dropped at the last moment for being too "strong", although it has turned up on DVD under the same banner.

So having a professed interest in the horror genre, I was quite looking forward to viewing it; however I am less enthusiastic now.  While it was extremely nasty, it was not all that original and slots into the subgenre of "torture porn" a la "Hostel" and the like.  During a period of civil unrest in Paris, four friends of rainbow ethnic origin flee the city after a heist and after the brother of the only girl -- who incidentally is pregnant -- is shot by the police and dies.  They are heading for the Dutch border in two cars.  The first pair take refuge at an out-of-the-way hostel peopled by sexually voracious females, submoronic cannibals, and neo-Nazi world-builders, where they are (not so swiftly) subjected to the usual and gory dispatch.  When the second pair turn up, they are taken to another cottage built over a disused mine, where only the gal manages to survive and outwit her tormentors until the last reel, where the viewer is left with an ambiguous ending.

Some viewers read this film as one loaded with political parables based on the current French government.  Maybe these were intended and do indeed exist, but if so, the message went straight over my head.

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• #2 Comment from mgp1449 
  02/07/08 17:24 | Permalink

  This had somewhat more justification than the Hollywood ' let's go camping in the
  woods/by the lake' slasher and the pre-capture sequences, though not too easy to
  see, had some style but the film did then drop into the more standard mould of
  blood, torture and the rest.   Better than some but worse than a number.
• #1 Comment from tommytickla 
  27/06/08 18:48 | Permalink

  Hmm. Almost sounds good