Hollywood has already cottoned on to the wave of brilliantly effective, hardcore horror movies emerging from France. HAUTE TENSION (HIGH TENSION) was altered for mainstream American consumption and its director brought on board the remake train with THE HILLS HAVE EYES. The directors of THEM (ILS) currently directed THE EYE remake. And Xavier Gens, helmsman of this jolting survivalist shocker, is the director of the video game based movie HITMAN, though rumor has it that his final cut will not the one that found its way into theatres thanks to top-level intervention at Fox. Just as the key influential American horrors of the seventies were born of a period of great political, social and international unease, this new wave of Gallic horror – with FRONTIERE(S) and INSIDE directly referencing the political state of the country – is reflective of considerable unrest and upheaval in France.
FRONTIER(S), more so than THEM and HIGH TENSION, is admittedly derivative of recent and classic modern horrors. A claustrophobic mine-shaft sequence in which monstrous in-bred “children” are momentarily glimpsed in the viewfinder of a camcorder is a direct lift of the best scare in Britain’s finest 21st century horror flick THE DESCENT. The movie that kick-started the French splatter cycle, HIGH TENSION, influences this film’s near-identical poster image and the climactic scenes of a blood-drenched, heavily traumatized final girl (an astonishing performance by Karina Testa, surviving her ordeal as a credibly wrecked, borderline-insane figure a la Marilyn Burns). The movie’s seriously fucked up central family are obviously an echo of the endurable TEXAS CHAINSAW clan – complete with warped dinner table gatherings and infirm elderly relative sat impotently at the table – an influence already prevalent in the less visceral but disturbing Belgian shocker CALVAIRE.
FRONTIER(S) survives its lack of originality by putting both its audience and its heroine through such a harrowing ordeal that you forget about all of the “borrowing” / “ripping off”, and become wrapped up in her plight. Gens has made one of the few horror movies to almost approach the unrelenting power of Tobe Hooper’s film : throughout this film, as with CHAINSAW, you often feel like you’re watching a film made by madmen spiraling out of control. It’s that good.
Modern day Paris, and riots have broken out all around the city in protest at the election of an extreme right wing candidate likened to George W Bush. Among the protestors are a small group of young folks, led by the pregnant Testa, who are exploiting the situation by indulging in lucrative looting. Pursued by the cops, the group wind up taking refuge at a run-down motel on the Luxembourg border presided over by the Von Geisler family. Overseen by a demented Nazi patriarch on a mission to create his own master race, the family have their own plans for the youths unexpectedly on their doorstep. The two older “sisters” entice the guys with a vigorous foursome while the marginally less depraved youngest girl – plucked from her real family years earlier to be a breeding vessel for this one – assists our heroine when she is eyed up as representing new blood to continue the family line.
Avoiding an excess of clichéd shocks and familiar character types, FRONTIER(S) is shot and edited with force, performed with scary conviction by tormentors and tormented alike, and lent an additional level of intensity via the malevolent sound design and music. An escalating sense of unease in the first half pays off with in-your-face brutality and sweat-inducing suspenseful scenarios in the second.
The family of Neo-Nazi loons are a frightening presence, and the suffering they dole out is jarring thanks to the powerful direction and some superb make-up effects. One guy is bled like a stuck pig; there’s an Achilles’ tendon slashing scene that beats the wince-worthiness of Misery’s “hobbling” and a similar moment in HOSTEL; one character meets a table saw demise as gruesome as anything in HIGH TENSION; and the film also delivers the juiciest shotgun-induced head detonation scene since THE PROWLER. For the latter moment alone, this flick is a must-see for gore fans.
Like the movies it so effectively apes, FRONTIER(S) ends without a sense of triumph or release : a haunting and resonant final scene merely brings an extreme sense of loss and only grim thoughts about the future.
The DVD does not have any real features other than that it’s presented in 16X9 Widescreen format and has English and Spanish subtitles as well as English closed captions. Frontiers was part of the 8 Films to Die For, but did actually have some trouble getting into theaters because of it’s content. The DVD is the unrated director’s cut, and the film does have a lot of violence and blood. So viewers be warned.
– Steven West
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- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
