Self-Cannibalism, Fetus-Snatching and Unlucky Youngsters: The Horror of the New French Extremity

One day when I was eight, I brought a horror film to a birthday party that I was accidentally invited to. It was a VHS tape of The Puppet Master, and it was the first movie I ever bought with my own money. 

 

And the Oscar goes to...

That night, the film saved me from that dreaded stigma of not cool for at least a whole calendar year because everyone loved all the gory goods in the film (not to mention the nudity). I instantly became associated with cool movies no one else had.  

The Puppet Master is terrible, by the way. Oh God, is it awful. But the soundtrack will always bring me back to the first time a movie gave me chills. And how much fun it was.

I can’t tell you how much horror movies get geeky kids like my adolescent former self through childhood. They were essential to me, and I took them gleefully like they were gummy Flintstone vitamins.

The sorts of French horror films I reviewed for this blog really took me back to those days when the only rule was: the gorier, the better. It was forbidden and exciting for a boy who grew up in a house where my brother was forbidden to watch MTV with me in the room, which just meant I had to watch creepy Nine Inch Nails videos late at night when no one was home – making it all the scarier anyway.

But it hit me recently that I’ve never really done a survey of all of the many amazing, colorful and tasty styles of the genre I love so much.

There’s something extra special about horror made in other countries, and it’s a lot of fun seeing how naturally those countries develop a look and feel that’s unique to them. It must be like having a child, and seeing all of the ways in which they are like you and the ways they are like your spouse, but yet a person all his own. I can’t imagine what that must feel like.

And France is a very physical and personal mother, because as it turns out, body horror is par for the course in France.

This is me smiling.

Outside of the great French classics Eyes Without A Face (pictured above) and the Hitchcockian Les Diabolique, my knowledge of French horror has been limited. This is why I started with French horror: to experience a style I’ve never seen before.

It turns out that many of the horror films produced in France are part of a larger wave of recent art known as the New French Extremity. It’s characterized by ultra-violence, taboo storylines, often uncomfortable truths, and lots and lots of sex (erotic or not). It’s also considered a type of “transgressive” art, meaning, it focuses on transgressive behaviors that are normally off limits in polite conversation, like cannibalism and incest.

But perhaps a more poignant way of describing them is to call them confrontational. The French love to turn the tables on the audience and really put them through the ringer morally and psychologically, and it’s a tradition as old as the Marquis de Sade himself.

De Sade: The original sadist. Literally.

All but one of the films I looked at are body horror films. Some of them are what we in the States call torture porn, though fans sometimes prefer the nice-y term ‘survival horror.’ Call it what you like, I don’t enjoy what this genre has become in America.

In American survival horror, we’re asked to accept the torture as existing for it’s own sake. This might be why I don’t tend to care for American survival horror all that much. There’s no point to it. For example, Saw features some twisted villain who just “wants to play a game,” but there is no point to it. It really does live up to its title, torture porn. 

A movie like Videodrome, on the other hand, while featuring lots of torture and body horror, is at least about something. 

Cronenberg: Not a fan of antique TV sets.

It’s much more interesting when a film challenges me, rather that simply burns some ants under a magnifying glass and asks, “Are you not entertained?”

And the French films certainly challenge you, but that’s not the only reason it’s better. It’s less about watching torture and more about experiencing empathy, and asking questions about why the torture is happening. Or more importantly, why we want to watch it at all.

I love interacting with movies, even when they are hard to stomach. And the French are well aware of the interactive nature of art, even if it tends to lead to some really pretentious offerings. Sometimes they just don’t know when to stop speaking to the audience.

Still, most of these horror movies just tell the story, so that’s good. Above all, if you are looking for movies that are a little bit twisted and aren’t afraid to deliver on buckets of blood and guts and real good scares, check these out. 

I ranked them by my own preference because everyone knows that a list isn't worth squat if it isn't numbered in descending order.

6. Frontiere(s)

Frontiere(s) is the story of a group of friends who decide to take advantage of the riots and protests in Paris over the newly-elected, right-wing administration by staging a robbery. They all plan to head for the border and start a new life in Amsterdam, but they get separated. Two of them wait at a creepy inn for their friends, but they are soon held captive by what turns out to be a family of Neo-Nazis. Or at least, the patriarch of the family is a Nazi. It’s not clear who in the family is there by blood or by will.

This film might be a step up from American torture films in that it has a social and political edge to the film, which gives it purpose. The only problem is that it never really gets fleshed out. The story is very derivative and the characterizations are very one-dimensional. It’s basically The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in France. 

However, the look and sound of the film are wonderful, and there are a few genuinely good kills, with a pretty creepy performance by the father. The climax just sort of happens, though, and then the film just sort of ends, too. It’s good if you liked films like Saw and Hostel, and it’s one of the most accessible Extremity films for American fans of survival horror.

5. Them (Ils)

Them is a home invasion film similar to The Strangers, where a couple is terrorized by some random thugs who aren’t identified until the third act. At a mere 75 minutes, that sentence describes the entire plot, by the way. Not that this is a bad thing. 

It’s easily the most accessible to American audiences, and as a thriller, the film works wonders. Once the home invasion happens, it never lets up.

This film is the only film that is considered a part of NFE that I wouldn’t consider body horror. There is some maiming, sure, but there is very little gore at all. It is the film’s subversive twist in the third act that made it controversial, and because I love both this movie and all of you, I won’t spoil its very disturbing final shot. 

As a movie, it is fast and delivers a few thrills, but is not really that scary. Still, in the pandemonium that characterizes post-riot France, it is timely, quick and effective.

4. In My Skin

In My Skin is a very disturbing film. It tells the story of a woman who accidentally cuts her leg at a party one night, and after she decides not to allow her leg to heal, she begins a downward spiral of self-mutilation, from which we get little rest. 

She keeps the wound open, and throughout the film, as she gets a promotion and her boyfriend decides to take their relationship to the next level, she cuts herself frequently and severely, and even begins eating her own flesh. That’s right: leave it to the French to make self-cannibalism a mainstream topic!

I’m not gonna lie: this is not an easy film to watch, especially if you’ve known anyone who has been a cutter. It doesn’t even feel like a horror film, though, even with the many truly horrific scenes. I’m so used to seeing a victim and some outside evil force acting on that victim, and having empathy for that victim as a result. It must be the American in me. But there’s no getaway moment here, and no demon or monster to kill. It is agonizing as a viewer, but that is also the beauty of the film. 

This dissonance is most evident in the moments where the manic and tense anxiety of the film’s atmosphere are briefly tempered only when she is peacefully and gleefully gnawing on her arm like a cat giving herself a bath. That’s the only time the intensity settles, and it’s those moments we’re supposed to be the most horrified.

Sometimes, there is no relief. This isn’t a ride, it’s a living nightmare. I think that’s the point, though. It’s about being inside the skin of someone who only knows inner peace when they disconnect from the reality of their self-destructive actions. 

The only thing the film doesn’t really do, in all of its craftiness, is explain why she’s doing it. There are a lot of things that are hinted at, but there is never a moment of clarity. But this is a small blemish on an otherwise powerful film.

3. High Tension (Switchblade Romance in USA)

High Tension might be the most famous example of modern French horror in America. Like Them, once it starts, it never lets up. But unlike Them, there are many deaths, and they are pretty brutal. 

The story moves along very quickly, and the stakes are high enough that I had genuine empathy for the characters. The most interesting thing for me, though, was the atmosphere. 

I’m a sucker for atmosphere in movies, so you do feel quite involved during this film. The whole first thirty minutes or so is especially heart-wrenching, and pulls you into the film immediately.

But there is one downside to this film, and it’s a big one: the twist at the end. It creates plot holes big enough to make M. Night Shaymalan look like Alfred Hitchcock. It also uses the ‘forbidden lesbian love’ cliché, and lays it on pretty darn thick at the end. But aside from those problems, this was a pretty enjoyable film, if a bit disappointing.

2. Martyrs

The first thing I thought after watching Martyrs was that it is the natural conclusion to all of the questions lurking behind the public’s fascination with the torture genre. 

This movie takes the whole genre by the horns and looks for a soul, and it asks pretty tough questions about why the genre even exists at all. The nihilist interpretation of this film, I feel, is miscalculated. This movie is actually an anti-torture film.

The film opens with a girl covered in blood and gashes who is running away from a warehouse in her underwear, screaming. The last image of a movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is where this one chooses to begin, as if to say, “you’ve seen this before, now let’s keep going.” Then, a nice family breakfast with some total strangers fifteen years later is interrupted by the same girl, who then blows them all away – including the children.

Right off the bat, the film starts telling a different story. She calls her best friend up and tells her what she did, and when her friend shows up, she is appalled. The girl thinks she killed the people who tortured her years ago, but her friend think she’s killed the wrong people. And we’re not sure either, on account of the girl seeing things that don’t exist.

I won’t give too much else away because I can’t recommend the film highly enough, but the question of whether she’s gone crazy and if this is what the film is really about (i.e. that torture makes people crazy) leads instead to even darker questions. 

At one point when we finally have a character imprisoned and being tortured in front of us, there is no music. We’re also offered no hope that she will escape. She is tortured in one short scene after another, each time fading to black and then fading back in. It is as if the audience is also having its lights knocked out, literally, until finally we are deprogrammed.

I think that is the point of this film: Why on earth would anyone want to see this? 

Given the way the film ends, which I won’t spoil here because it’s just that good, it would seem that we are the reason this poor girl is being tortured. She’s a martyr for us, the audience. She endures it all so that we may experience transcendence through the film and through her. It’s kinda like the cultists in Cabin in the Woods who torture the pretty young people to appease the Ancient Ones, even though, in reality, they are doing it to please us – the voyeuristic and sadistic audience. Even since the days of Aristotle, drama has placed sacrificial lambs before us to be slaughtered, and the morality of this is still debated to this day. Martyrs is merely self-aware.

1. Inside (A L’intereur)

As good as Martyrs was, Inside is the crown jewel of French Extremity horror, at least for me. It’s also just a damn good horror film. I think there’s probably a political message hidden in there somewhere, but if it’s there, it’s the least interesting part of this fantastic film.

The story is simple: after a pregnant schoolteacher loses her husband in a car accident, a mysterious woman shows up to claim the teacher’s unborn child as her own. It turns out she was in the same car accident, was also pregnant, but lost her child. So there you have it: a twisted sort of premise that – were it a struggle for a baby and not a fetus – might not actually be that uncommon in film or in life. But I don’t think any of them went to such lengths that they were willing to literally rip it out of another woman’s body.

Nevertheless, as simple as the story is, it’s really the execution that makes it all work. Beatrice Dalle (also in Livid and Trouble Every Day, which are two French horror films I have yet to watch) gives an amazing performance as the woman in black, whose own pain at the loss of her own child, is just as real. The fact that we understand why she’s doing it means that we know she’s determined. And that makes it even scarier.

As other people begin to show up, the death toll not-surprisingly rises, but it’s the manner and timing that really keeps you on the edge of your seat. The film constantly delivers lots of really scary moments, and all of the actions are simple, practical and believable.

Oh, and did I mention the pregnant woman? Most of the women I know would probably equate pregnancy to being like it’s own survival horror movie, and it strikes me as strange that no one ever thought to do a horror movie where the heroine is going into labor at the same time she’s trying to not be cut up into pieces. Maybe no one was that cruel, but even Peter Jackson’s zombie baby has nothing on this kind of twisted.

This movie is one of the genuinely scariest movies I’ve seen in a long time, with a premise and ending that is totally twisted, and it does not spare any expense in the gore department. 

Even though, like almost all of the French horror films I’ve listed, it is totally serious, with little to no comic relief, it is still one of the most fun and enjoyable horror movies I’ve ever seen. I’ll never forget the experience of watching this film, and the times I thought, “Holy crap, I can’t believe that just happened.” Not for the faint of heart, but definitely a must-see for horror fans everywhere.