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Film: Prey
Year of production: 2010
UK Release date: 6th June 2011
Distributor: Entertainment One
Certificate: 18
Running time: 80 mins
Director: Antoine Blossier
Starring: Bérénice Bejo, Grégoire Colin, Isabelle Renauld, François Levantal, Joseph Malerba
Genre: Drama/Adventure/Horror/Thriller/Mystery
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France
Language: French
Review by: Calum Reed
As a pocket-size 80-minute feature, Antoine Blossier’s Prey, a film with a roaming sense of conviction towards its sequences of horror, is actually fairly compact. Blossier pulls no punches in his debut directorial outing, offering a unique spin on age-old themes. One of the many customs of horror cinema lies in familial drama - going all the way back to Jamie Lee Curtis’ maniacal brother trying to kill her in Halloween, and up to the infidelity and love triangle in 2004’s terrific The Descent; people beset on by predators are, to some degree, already unsettled in their personal lives.
The family dynamic in Prey reinforces this narrative staple of murky backstory, pitting Grégoire Colin (formerly of Beau Travail) as Nathan, a meek accountant up against the tyranny of his prosperous in-laws.
Married to Claire (Bérénice Bejo), he is growing increasingly frustrated with her obligations towards the family’s lucrative pesticide business, and particularly the dependence placed upon her by domineering father/employer Nicolas (François Levanthal). Nathan wants nothing more than to have a child and settle down, while Claire remains wary of adding distance between her and the family.
A gathering at their country mansion gets off to a shaky start, as rampaging deer from a surrounding forest threaten the life of Claire’s father. The male members of the household (including younger son David) venture into the forest to surmise why the animals are behaving erratically, and with the intent to extinguish any potential threats that they encounter.
The expedition unsurprisingly does not run smoothly, and as tempers flare between the gun-wielding alphas, they discover that the primary danger is not each other but the volatile, predatory wildlife lurking in the undergrowth…
Prey is being heavily promoted as a special effects coup of sorts, provided by a Hollywood team somewhat renowned for their visual flair. This doesn’t translate as a particularly valuable commodity on-screen: in terms of production values, Prey appears to have much more in common with minimal-budget, visceral horror films (which is not at all an insult), and rather than manipulate through shock-tactic editing, endeavours to instil tension through internal politics. A canny use of hand-held camera has been the benchmark since 1999’s unsteady Blair Witch adventure, and this indie woodland descendant doesn’t deviate much from that train of thought.
As these men venture deeper into the forest, the question begs: are they targets because they’re ungrateful with their own lives, or just too morally-tarnished as people? It might be that we simply can’t bear for a family with two-point-four children to perish, but biochemical magnates and ageing tycoons are within the realm of acceptable ‘victims’. The further Prey goes, it becomes a lot looser in its desire to expose the allegorical goals of the narrative, eventually revealing its lack of sophistication through utilising platitudinous ideas about society’s preoccupation with land and money, and its ruthless need to preserve it. Moreover, the introduction of Erin Brockovich-style injustice into its explanation of events - as an emotional device designed to provoke ecological outrage and further lessen the appeal of these men - is a shade disappointing.
The exhilarating appeal of Prey lies in its grounded depiction of aggression as a product of legitimate animalistic instinct, and its thematic consideration of what constitutes a ‘predator’. Unconcerned with florid displays of violence, Blossier charts the primal regression of his desperate cast (not unlike Marshall in The Descent, incidentally) and in the heart of this quest for survival unearths a rousing, unexpected reality within the frenzy. This reality reaches its peak when the behaviour of one of the characters severely compromises our view of them, but is executed with a daring dose of finality and allays with the primitive descension of the no-holds-barred war.
With more time afforded to exploring the interworking of the family (the action element of the film begins less than ten minutes in), there would be much more of a symbiotic value to some of the relationships in the film. As it is, we don’t sense enough of the characters’ deepseated traits and attitudes to become immersed in the domestic strife. Nathan’s relationship with Claire, for instance, is founded upon a solitary conversation between the two, and it isn’t fleshed out much more beyond that; while Nicolas remains a corporate antagonist used to punctuate the film’s social commentary. Prey asks questions about what standard of behaviour – if any – we should expect from people essentially out for themselves, and whether we should buy into its ropey, cynical conclusions on human nature. In that regard, one thing is surely for certain: the film has a pretty cutthroat advocacy of reprehensibility and karma.
Prey squanders opportunities to flaunt its grittier aspects, neither fully content to explore the motivations of either of the two female characters, or exploit the situational drama of the opening act to make its issues worthwhile. It’s undeniably impacting as a primitive horror, but what is atoned for by a fascinating shift in tone has already primarily been undone by overt, weary nods to allegory and is finally hampered by a worrying late fascination with rectitude. The main moral of this story is surprisingly not to stay out of the forest. CR
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Film: 5150 Elm's Way
Year of production: 2009
UK Release date: 30th May 2011
Distributor: Entertainment One
Certificate: 18
Running time: 110 mins
Director: Éric Tessier
Starring: Marc-André Grondin, Normand D'Amour, Sonia Vachon, Mylène St-Sauveur, Élodie Larivière
Genre: Drama/Horror/Thriller
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Canada
Language: French
Review by: Rob Markham
Captivity is a strong central premise in horror cinema. From the extreme gore of films like Hostel and Saw to the intense psychological torment of more thoughtful films such as The Ordeal, it is a path well-trodden in the genre. 5150 Elm’s Way (5150 Rue des Ormes) is a French-Canadian offering of that familiar beast, only choosing to use the brain instead of other, messier, internal organs.
Having just moved to attend film school, Yannicknick rides his bike around his new environment and documents the surroundings with his camera. Taking a ride to the suburbs, he turns down Elm’s Way, but comes off his bike and injures himself. Noticing a taxi parked outside 5150, he asks for a ride and the owner offers to call one for him as he is off duty.
Yannicknick enters the house uninvited to wash the blood off his hands, but hears a disturbing sound from upstairs and goes to investigate. He finds a man with a serious wound screaming for help.
Yannicknick tries to escape, but is forced at gunpoint to stay, and soon finds himself a prisoner of Jacques, a ‘righteous’, psychotic killer, and his dysfunctional family. Jacques has no choice but to keep Yannick prisoner until he can work out what to do with him and the strain soon takes its toll on the family unit.
Jacques offers Yannicknick the chance of freedom, but only if he wins at chess. The only problem is that Jacques is a champion chess player - and unbeaten...
There is a formula that many successful horror films (and in many cases, entire franchises) can follow in the captivity sub-genre: introduction, capture, torture, escape, redemption... It’s been proven to work over and over again, particularly with the advent of the dubiously named ‘torture-porn’ genre. You could be forgiven for thinking 5150 Elm’s Way would follow the same pattern.
It certainly seems that way when we first meet Yannicknick, a fresh-faced film student with a nice girlfriend. The first hints that things are not what they seem are laid out for us in the form of his alcoholic mother and generally disapproving and disappointed father. We follow Yannicknick for a while as he rides around his new neighbourhood, and we are shown just what a moral young man he is when he returns a young girl’s stolen ice-cream from a bully.
Fortunately, we are not made to suffer the usual clichés of the genre, even though when Yannicknick knocks on the door of 5150 Elm’s Way, we know exactly what will happen (the clue is in the title after all).
Instead of the usual green-lit, dirty basements, barred cages and dingy operating theatres, Yannick is imprisoned in an incredibly pleasant family home with pictures on the walls, children’s bedrooms complete with cuddly toys, and a generally comfortable feel to the place. This is starkly contrasted with the actual room of Yannick’s imprisonment, which is barren, with a plain floor, dirty walls, bloodstains and a mattress at one end. It is an effective use of mise-en-s cène and director Eric Tessier piles on the visuals to signify Yannick’s increasingly fragile state of mind. The most effective of which is the growing bloodstain on the wall. There are times when the effects seems a little overwrought (Yannick’s hallucinations, for example), but on the whole, Tessier does a good job in making us feel as confined as Yannick.
The family itself would give any student of psychoanalysis a headache, as we are faced with varying complexities and complex relationships. The father, Jacques, believes he is righteous and kills those he sees as evil. He also robs grave for the bodies of those he considers righteous, in order to complete a secret project (without wanting to spoil anything, it involves his passion for chess). The mother, Maude, is a religious and fragile creature, who is loyal to her husband but sees the wrong in what he does. Michelle has inherited her father’s propensity for murder, but she does not have the ideology that he does. Anne is a young, mute child who cannot disguise her contempt for her father.
There are certainly hints of Freudian themes, and, at one point, there seems to be an attempt at a representation of the Oedipal Complex, where Yannick has Maude believing they can have a life together, away from Jacques. Yannick’s own father issues also make their mark but aren’t given enough real depth for them to be effective. There is certainly enough to keep the most avid critic referring back to Freud and Lacan.
There are, in fact, a few too many issues to deal with in the family unit. So many that the running time cannot possibly give all of them the analysis they deserve. As a result, the family’s woes seem to be slightly superficial. As the film develops, we contend with the increasingly unbalanced Maude, the psychotic Michelle, whose inheritance of her father’s passion for righteousness is seriously misguided, Anne’s sectioning, and, of course, Yannick’s predicament in the room upstairs. This is a brief description of the dynamics. There is more.
Perhaps an attempt to focus on less of the various threads and to concentrate on developing only a few of them would have been more successful in terms of storytelling, but, as the film progresses, the tension does mount to great effect through the confrontations over a chess board between Yannick and Jacques. Chess becomes a shared of obsession and the film almost plays like a chess match itself, building piece by piece until the climax. It is an effective technique, and the performances do it justice.
Unfortunately, there are too many contrivances throughout and by the end it feels forced. The journey of Yannick’s taped plea for help borders on ridiculous to the point where you could be forgiven for thinking there are only three families living in the whole town. The character of Anne and her role in events is not given anywhere near enough development, and her involvement in the tense final scenes does not work as one would have hoped.
There are also some discrepancies; for example, Jacques insistence that the death of someone evil should be painless and quick, yet why does Yannick find a screaming, partially disembowelled man in the house? It also borders dangerously on the absurd, but there are enough positive points that it is well worth a watch.
A decent film, offering some interesting characters and direction. There is nothing particularly new here, but Tessier’s use of visuals and some great performances make for an entertaining thriller. If you’re expecting horror you may be disappointed. This is more of a horrific drama, but the tension is there. Perhaps it could have been more focused, but there is enough here to appeal to those with a penchant for the darker things in life. RM
