Ils: A Vision in Terror

The 2006 French film Ils (released as Them in the United States) is one more reason the French horror film movement is one to keep an eye on. It's not a gore fest like Frontier(s) and Haute Tension, but it doesn't need to be. It is a psychological torture show hell bent on making sure the viewer will never feel safe again. Does it succeed? Yes. Wildly so.

The premise for the film is fairly straightforward. A young couple lives in the country fairly isolated from any neighbors. Night falls and they find themselves targeted by some people with very nasty things on their minds. The couple, Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) and Lucas (Michael Cohen), do not know these people, do not know why they are targeted, and do not know how far the group is willing to go. And just when you think things are fine, the tide turns even worse.

Comparisons to The Strangers are a given. They're also unfair. Yes, they are almost identical films, but there are differences which give Ils an advantage over the 2008 American film starring Liv Tyler.

American horror films, with a few notable exceptions, have been playing catch-up with foreign horror films for the past decade or so. Japan, Belgium, Korea, Germany and France have all been turning out films that are truly innovative and scary. American horror films, for the most part, feel very safe. Even the ones which have nihilistic endings like that first brought to the screen by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 version) still feel like they are products of Hollywood or a Hollywood-inspired system. The foreign horror films put viewers on alert that anything is possible at any time, and that alone is enough to get audiences on the edge of their seats. Ils feels like it is happening to the audience. The Strangers feels like a movie you watch and forget about in a few days.

Another extremely important difference is the villains. Without giving anything away from either film, the antagonists in The Strangers, with their creepy masks, also feel like Hollywood villains. This is not to say that a mask-wearing maniac cannot be scary, but when you compare the terrorizers in Ils to those in The Strangers, it is obvious which is more effective in invoking a sense of dread and unease. Part of that reason is, again, that Ils feels more honest. You could see this happening in real life (and both films are supposedly inspired by true events).

All of that serves to make a movie that is far more unsettling than The Strangers.

Safe horror films are basically useless and a waste of time. They are like comedies that only have a few laughs. Ils is far from a safe movie, and it is a noteworthy addition to French cinema's already illustrious history. It is a classic in the making, and it is not to be missed by horror fans and people looking for a good scare. Don't buy into it yet? Watch it and pay attention to the reason the psychopaths give for targeting the couple. If it doesn't send chills up your spine, you may want to check yourself for a pulse.