Recently every French horror film I've seen has just been fantastic. From the brilliant zombie romp 'The Horde', to the genre-stupefying Martyrs, everything the country seems to produce has outclassed anything this country or the States could muster.
So when I heard about another French movie that seemed to get a bit of praise, and featured monsters, in 'The Pack' (or La Meute) I was keen to see it. But sadly, I was left disappointed overall.
In the middle of nowhere, Charlotte (Emilie Dequenne) picks up a hitchhiker, Max (Benjamin Biolay) and they make their way to a roadside restaurant. But whilst there, Max vanishes, and only when Charlotte returns later that night to try and find him she finds out he is the son of the mysterious restaurant owner, La Spack (Yolande Moreau) who has been abducted people to feed to her undead 'children', a pack of flesh eating monsters.
Charlotte's only hope is the former sheriff (who,spends the entire time of the film wearing a shirt with the slogan 'FUCK ON THE FIRST DATE' for no reason whatsoever) who becomes suspicious of the dodgy restaurant.
As interesting as that sounds, I can assure you it isn't. The major problem stems from the fact that the film takes forever to get going. Whilst I don't mind slowly paced films, this just drags on and on, and even when the hideous brood of creatures finally appear, even that is pretty dull.
Now, don't get me wrong there are a few legitimately good moments in the film, and some fantastic gore, but it's all just too few and far between. There's also a nicely creepy performance from Moreau as the restaurant owner and brood 'mother'.
The make-up effects on the creatures (when we finally see them) are quite impressive also, and they are suitably scary, but with so build up to them, interest struggles to remain.
Even the ending dragged on a bit for me, and this isn't a long film we are talking about here, it's pretty much done within 80 minutes, but couldn't even hold my interest for that. Other than the aforementioned plus points, there's not a whole hell of a lot here to recommend it.
**
Some nice gore and shocks aside, this is pretty dull horror that somehow manages to make even an 80 minute run time drag.
1 comment:
I quite liked it. By no means perfect but it had its moments and the creatures were well executed.
My major issue was with the double-bluff conclusion which could have been so awesome had the director been brave enough to follow it through and not retract it at the last second.
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