Them (2006)

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Movie
German title Them
Original title Ils
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2006
length 74 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director David Moreau ,
Xavier Palud
script David Moreau ,
Xavier Palud
production Richard Grandpierre
music René-Marc Bini
camera Axel Cosnefroy
cut Nicolas Sarkissian
occupation

Them , also play or die (original: ils , in German: she ) is a French horror film from 2006. It was shot in Romania .

action

The French Clémentine, who teaches at the Collège Français in Bucharest , lives with the writer Lucas, also French, in an isolated, old villa in the Snagov forest . When she was driving home from school one afternoon in October, she passed an accident on the country road. What she does not know: last night a young woman was murdered in this car, whose mother had evaded a person on the road, had driven the car into a lamppost during this maneuver and disappeared in the dark after getting out.

After an evening together, which is only disturbed by the barking of an abandoned dog, Clémentine stays up alone and corrects the dictations from the same day. Suddenly the phone rings, but there is only a creak on the other end of the line. During the night she wakes up around four in the morning because drum-like noises can be heard through the open window. Lucas goes outside and overhears her car being stolen. After Clémentine called the police, the power went out. In the dark, the two sneak up to the upper floor. The light of a flashlight falls through a window. After they are even more frightened by strange noises (the dog can also be heard barking again), the electricity suddenly turns on again and they suspect that strangers are now in the house. Lucas leaves Clémentine in the bedroom to check on the intruders. However, he is injured in the leg. Now Clémentine takes the initiative and climbs into the attic to take them both outside. There she is attacked by one of the intruders, but can push him through a gap in the outer wall. From above, she sees two people bend over the motionless body and one of them begins to climb up the scaffolding.

They manage to lock the intruder in the house and escape into the forest, where they can shake off another chaser with the help of a flashlight. But then a fence turns out to be an insurmountable obstacle for the injured Lucas. Clémentine continues walking alone, is followed and suddenly stands in front of her car. She gets in and tries to drive off, but suddenly notices a figure in front of her. Lucas, who has meanwhile walked along the fence, hears their screams and can only see the taillights of the moving car. Shortly afterwards, he finds the empty car and knocks down the perpetrator standing there. He hears screams again and climbs over a shaft into a tunnel. In a remote room, he sees a teenager trying to overpower Clémentine. Lucas knocks him down too and frees his wife. A young boy claims to know the way out. However, he separates the two refugees on a ladder and Lucas stays behind again. A few minutes later, Clémentine sees herself almost there before a barricade stops her attempt to escape - right on a busy street and now in daylight.

Finally, several young people leave the forest and get on a bus. The audience learns that the bodies of the couple were found by the police five days later and that the young people who were arrested as murderers a few weeks later were between ten and fifteen years old. The youngest of them justified the act with the fact that the victims did not want to "play" with them.

background

At the beginning of the film, a fade-in indicates that the story is based on a true story. However, this is a typical stylistic device to intensify the effect of the film. Allegedly the fictional plot is based on a story from Romania, where an Austrian couple was killed by three teenagers in their holiday home. According to the director, this story is an urban legend told to you by a taxi driver in Czechoslovakia .

The villa in which the film was shot actually stands on a property in Bucharest. The total shooting time was 30 days.

According to the director, the lead actress Olivia Bonamy suffered from claustrophobia . Her depicted feelings of fear in the tunnel were therefore sometimes real.

Reviews

The lexicon of international films praises the production: “Exciting horror film that lives from the threatening atmosphere and its two brilliant main actors. A rare stroke of luck for genre cinema . "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Them . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2007 (PDF; test number: 109 295 V / DVD).
  2. ↑ a b c IMDb Trivia about the film
  3. ↑ Emmanuèle Frois: Frissons dans la nuit. Le Figaro.fr, accessed November 9, 2018 .
  4. ^ Them in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used , accessed April 15, 2012