(2004)
Dir - Pascal Laugier
Overall: MEH
French director Pascal Laugier started off his full-length career with the bog-standard, creepy orphanage movie Saint Ange, (House of Voices). Everything here from the beaten down location, somber performances, haunting piano music, and vague supernatural occurrences are presented in an identical way that various other such films have presented them. This is all perfectly fine if any number of things like a sufficiently eerie mood, intriguing mystery, or skin-crawling scares are also thrown into the mix. Sadly, none of the above are on display here. Virginie Ledoyen's protagonist is terribly underwritten and seems perpetually bored to be on camera, while Lou Doillon takes every aspect of her portrayal right out of the "crazy people off of their meds with a wild, unkempt haircut" rulebook. Not to exclusively hark on the the movie's unoriginality, but it really cannot be understated how problematic it is in elevating so much as a single scene into something that will be remembered mere seconds after the credits roll. When things do try and get trippy, the completely uninteresting story makes such moments seem more random and incoherent than anything else. Lucio Fulci's favorite leading lady Catriona MacColl shows up for a couple of scenes though so at least it has that going for it.
(2005)
Dir - Christian Alvart
Overall: GOOD
Filmmaker Christian Alvart has delivered a steady stream of thriller/horror/sci-fi outings since around the turn of the century, (both in and out of his home country), and his second entry Antibodies, (Antikörper), is in many ways a German Silence of the Lambs. There is even a joke made early on where the psychotic pedophile murderer, (an appropriately vile André Hennicke), proclaims "What did you expect, Hannibal Lecter?". That is not the only nod to arguably the most well-known and respected "interview a serial killer behind bars who plays mind games with you" FBI profiling thriller ever made and in many respects, this one ups the unpleasantness while still successfully adhering to the formula. The conventional structure and familiar plot points do not end up jeopardizing the whole though, as it is still exciting to witness a wrap-up that successfully gets under one's skin. While it certainly will not be for all tastes in this respect, most of the uncomfortable moments are delivered through dialog as opposed to being explicitly shown in an irritating, torture-porn shock value way; something that is always nice for a change.
(2006)
Dir - Andrew Currie
Overall: GOOD
Throwing domesticated zombies into Leave It to Beaver suburbia proves to be quite an enjoyably silly pastiche in Canadian filmmaker Andrew Currie's Fido. The initial script by Currie, Robert Chomiak, and Dennis Heaton was written twelve years earlier, finally emerging somewhat unfortunately when both serious zombie movies and parodies of them were a dime a dozen. Despite the walking corpse over-saturation, this one takes an angle that is pretty distinguishable from the rest. It is not like you are going to see a zombie milkman accompanied by an exaggerated, whimsical, G-rated musical score anywhere else. The detailed, sugar-coated set design and throwback newsreel footage are flawlessly convincing for the 1950s, alternate reality setting and they mix hilariously with both the gore and simply bizarre elements like Carrie-Anne Moss's textbook housewife gaining genuine feelings for Billy Connolly's undead title character. It all has a macabre, quasi-perversity to it that puts thing squarely in the spoof category and Currie knows just how to maximize the amount of goofy joy to be had out of such a juxtaposition that by all logical means, should never work on paper.
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