THEM (2006)

aka "Ils"
Directors: David Moreau and Xavier Palud

Synopsis: The French being determined to make a good horror movie, Ils, or Them, shows the supposedly true story of a young couple terrorized by a group of intruders at their country home.

My take: Let's begin with what is wrong with this film -
1. The story is too formulaic, offering only a slightly different twist to this genre. The concept of Them is much like Funny Games, only without the anti-violence message. The twist to the story is kind of intriguing, but the scares are not really all that original.
2. Also like Funny Games, the couple here is pretty ineffective. They don't really attempt to fight back against their attackers. How the husband manages to get stabbed in the ass by a broken glass door and thus incapacitate himself for the rest of the film is beyond me.
3. The couple deserves everything that happens to them for owning this particular house. It is the perfect horror movie house with its long, spooky hallways, its remote woodland location, construction area complete with hanging plastic sheets, and the extensive underground system of poorly lit tunnels under their house.
4. This was too short for a movie, and alot of it was filler material. With some more judicious editing, this would clock in at under an hour.
5. I didn't need the 'where are they now' stuff at the end - this is just a cheap way of avoiding actually showing the end of the story.

But, maybe I'm being overly critical. Them was a damn scary movie at times, fun to watch in the dark with a bunch of easily frightened friends. The opening sequence was fairly intense. There are no monsters, nothing supernatural, just pure, realistic terror, the kind of stuff that makes you want to run out and buy a gun.

Body count: 7

Moron Award: The woman is being held down and molested(?) by 2 attackers. The husband kills one of them and then the couple trusts the other one when he says he won't hurt them and wants to help them gets away?

2 out of 4 Zombie Faces