Summoning The Dead, And Crazy Gentlemen With Scalpals: Russian Horror (part 2)

The Russian horror films I looked at in Part 1 were fun and big, but true horror fans might prefer this second list. It includes the artsier and more underground variety of horror films, some of which are so extreme and gruesome they might even give Tarantino nightmares. 

I’m not sure how to describe them, though. When I looked at French horror last time, I found the existence of an aesthetic that actually had a name. But I knew right off the bat that I wouldn’t be able to say the same for Russian horror because it would take less time to watch every Russian horror film that has ever been made than it would to watch the last season of American Horror Story.

Some of the movies on this list have things in common, and they are the things that are distinctly Russian. But what to call them?

They’re not Constructivist, because artifacts of modernity (cars, cameras, bomb shelters, etc) are usually regarded as sources of horror in these films, not praise. Constructivism also, being a Soviet propagandist aesthetic, favors order over chaos, and it lacks appeals to emotion. If anything these films are anti-Constructivist.

The emphasis on time and movement in films like the original Viy and in the films of Alexander Sokurov are somewhat Impressionistic. But guys like Sokurov would probably argue that, because the films exist for their own sake (he’s even gone so far as to say that the audience is irrelevant), they are probably counter to what Impressionism is about. 

Impressionism wants you to be aware at every moment that you are watching a movie, whereas these Russian films, if they want anything, it’s that you get lost in them. And this tradition of transcendent cinema in Russia is pretty well-suited for horror, if you think about it.

What I actually think these films recreate is old school Surrealism viewed through the lens of Russia’s existing legacy of Russian Symbolism. And as with any Symbolist movement, the truth is buried in metaphor and cannot be unearthed except through constant and close observation. It’s not cryptic, it’s just indirect. 

Russian Symbolism in particular really likes the color blue because of its connection to the heavens, so you see it everywhere. It’s as if the piece of art exists in another, transcendent plane of existence. It’s not sensual or emotional, it’s interested in your soul. And it’s deep as hell. 

When you combine that with Surrealism, an artistic style whose latency has to do with subconscious projections of our innermost desires and fears, it makes sense. I won’t go too much into all of that, but it’s definitely there, and it’s pretty bizarre.

At this point, I can think of at least one old college professor or two that might have already thrown a book at me by now were he reading this. But Surrealism is the closest analogue to what I know. I am a disciple of Lynch, after all.

But enough of me butchering art theory, onto the movies.

Viy (1967)

Subgenres: Fantasy, Folk Tale, Comedy, Religious

Availability: Youtube

Mosfilm was able to produce the first horror film in Russia by calling it a “folk tale,” which was permissible in the Soviet Union because folk tales were considered a part of Russian heritage (sorta), even if some censors disagreed.

This film was so much fun to watch, and I’m pretty sure it’s a comedy. It took me a while to figure the film out, and I think I can safely say that it is literally one big joke. The story is structured like a joke, with an actual punch-line at the end. Throughout the movie, one drunk seminarian is compelled to pray for a witch for three nights to save her soul. No one’s even really sure if he can do it, and a lot of the comedy comes from this.

The film has the comic feel of Evil Dead, the cartoonish farce of Monty Python, and what I believe to be a very cryptic Russian in-joke involving animals who are somehow onto us humans. But one thing is certain, the final ten minutes is worth the price of admission. (If you wanna cheat, you can go watch it on Youtube, but I won’t give you the link. No sir!)

But the old-school special effects were totally up my alley. I didn’t expect it, first of all, but it was also terrifying in that way only good horror movies are. Frankly, I’m amazed this film was even made. After all, it’s not just kinda sorta horror. It’s horror. 

So, um, we were trying to make a good entrance, but we kinda got a little stuck.

This is fantasy horror, and were it not for making the whole film feel like a joke based on an already-unbelievable folk story (from a Russian perspective, anyway), the Soviet film code might have prevented us from having this wonderful gem in the vaults. This film was also remade as Evil (2006), and recently as Viy (2014), which I review in Part 1.

Agony (1975)

Subgenres: Historical, Psychological

Availability: Youtube (Part 1 and Part 2)

It’s probably not surprising that one of the first horror films in Russia also happened to be a biopic about Rasputin. It took director Elem Klimov 9 years and several rewrites to finish the film, and another 10 years before the Soviet censors allowed the film to be shown in Russia for the first time in 1985. It was not the only film that put him in the cross-hairs of the censors. 

Though the film portrays him as a lunatic, which is in keeping with Communist ideology, the Communist authorities banned the film because it portrayed the Czar as merely weak and somewhat sympathetic (as opposed to downright evil). It also suggests that the Bolsheviks were not a big part of the Imperial family’s demise. This is actually true, they didn’t have that much of an impact, having in reality only become really active a year after the events of the film. But you know how it is with government censors and history.

In any case, Agony is a wonderful psychological horror film about one of the most terrifying personages of the twenty-first century. His influence over the Czar’s military strategy and over the Czarina’s home could be described as hypnotic or, as one could still interpret with ease after the credits roll, as being supernatural in origin. 

One scene in particular lets us in on the hypnosis, and a key ingredient is fear. In real life, everyone will stand and watch a lunatic hurt people, and they will do nothing if they are afraid of him. 

But his influence over these apathetic followers is very creepy, and you just want someone to stop him, or at least say something. This makes his notoriously drawn-out assassination all the more intriguing (even though his real life death was far more elaborate and painful than the one in the film). 

As a film, it could have benefited from better pacing. But the sets and music are wonderful, and the performance of Rasputin is truly terrifying. Western filmmakers might have taken his madness and cruelty further, but I enjoyed this version. It was just on this side of believable, and that makes it even scarier.

The Green Elephant (1999)

Subgenres: Z movie, Trash cinema, Extreme

Availability: Youtube

This underground Russian trash film is without a doubt the most disturbing film I’ve ever seen. It’s not for everybody, but then again I’m not sure if it’s for anybody. I'm reviewing it, though, in the off chance you're into this sort of thing.

It seems pretty clear that it’s about the tendency of war (or any situation that exposes people to extended periods of torture and cruelty) to turn people into monsters, and we see the monstrosity in all its detail. Anytime you’ve ever had a conversation about the evil things that men are capable of, imagination is all you need. 

But this film shows us how a person will regress into an infantile form of madness, and the performances depicting the most beastly, animalistic behaviors in men feel all too terrifyingly real.

Two Soviet Army soldiers are locked in a cell and begin to go mad in diverging ways: the one becoming a self-depricating and submissive infant, and the other a melting pot of pure rage. The film goes for the gross-out by showing us things like defacation, cannibalism and everything in between, all as if to say, “Cruelty begets insanity, which begets more cruelty.” The final twenty minutes takes this to its extreme conclusion.

And did I mention, this film was made by a woman?

Visions of Suffering

Subgenres: Experimental, Surreal, Supernatural, Psychological
Availability: Torrent only

This film is one of a few powerful horror movies from diamond-in-the-rough spookster Audrey Iskanov. Clear on the other side of the continent, there is a city on the Northeastern border of China nearly 4,000 miles from Moscow called Khabarovsk where he’s making some of the craziest horror movies you'll ever see in your life.

It is not surprising that a brilliant filmmaker would get a jumpstart on telling truly horrifying stories so far away from Moscow. Audrey Iskanov is Russia’s Cronenberg. His films are best described as ruthlessly inventive. They are difficult to watch, and he sometimes ventures so far out from convention that they become tedious in places, and most of this is due to undisciplined editing. 

But I would be lying if I didn’t think Iskanov wasn’t one of the most talented and original horror filmmakers living today, and he is only getting better with each film.

I had to do quite a bit of searching to find Visions of Suffering, but thank God I found a torrent of it. It’s one of the most original horror movies I’ve seen, and one that gives David Lynch a run for his money.

Hi.

The movie is the story of a guy who has nightmares while studying death (not so surprising), and some very bizarre happenings surrounding him and the disreputable dudes at a nightclub that his girlfriend hangs out with for some reason. The main guy has horrible dreams, but his reality is not much of a departure – his whole life is a nightmare.

That all doesn’t sound very original, but the execution is what make this film work. At first, I didn’t think I was going to like it at all. For ten minutes, all I imagined I would experience for the next two hours was some direct-to-video dreck that some pretentious film school drop out thought was impressive. How wrong I was.

Maybe that’s overstating it. Here: try this sample. If you like that, you’ll love this movie. 

Parts of this movie are truly terrifying, I’m not gonna lie. It’s like a really bad drug trip, with sequences of psychedelia in the vein of that famous sequence from 2001. 

But the film is not just original because of its camera techniques and use of multi-layered, asynchronous sounds (and a prog rock soundtrack a la Dario Argento films), but in the fluidity of the amorphous other. Whatever your favorite monster is, it’s here.

I’ve never seen a movie that utilized so many different kinds of monsters (and some that may not even exist, to be honest). There’s vampires (the old-school, Nosferatu kind, that is), zombies, aliens, incubi and succubi, parasites, machines, demons, bugs, scarecrows, and even just plain old rapey-lookin’ dudes in berets. The probably-alien, tick-looking things alone will give me nightmares, as will the flying, metal, weaponized gizmos that blow holes in your head Phantasm-style. 

The film brings together so many different elements into an experimental, Lynchian dreamscape, and to me most of it works. If you can get past some of the more low-budget moments and appreciate some of the things this film tries, I hope you’ll give it a whirl. I would watch this film again, though I probably won’t until I forget about the tick-looking things. Spoon doesn’t like ticks.

Philosophy of a Knife

Subgenres: Shockumentary, Mondo, Experimental, Extreme
Availability: Youtube (only Part 2, and it's not subtitled), or Torrent

Even though Iskanov’s next movie demonstrates more artistic vision and greater filmmaking mastery than the last, it is still even harder to watch than Visions of Suffering. Using an interview with a real-life WWII Vet, the film re-enacts science experiments that were performed on people at the infamous Unit 731.

The interview subject tells us story after story of what he knew about the infamous Japanese internment camp, where Japanese soldiers experimented on Russian soldiers. Though he didn’t witness any of the experiments first hand, he is our guide, and the only relief we get between scenes of torture.

This sort of thing doesn’t sound like fun to watch, and it’s not. But as a lover of cinema and all it’s capable of, I have to say I found some parts fascinating. The scenes tend to start out based in realism, but then they become something else. Other objects take on symbolic significance, and then it will completely let go and become surreal. In one scene, a particularly brutal experiment takes place in juxtaposition with a nurse cleaning the skin and flesh off of a human head. 

There... all better.

We see each and every gory step in the process, and its cross-cutting with the experiment made me immediately think of the French horror classic Eyes Without A Face. That film is also a surreal film about the loss of identity created by the trauma of war. 

There is a diary narration by a nurse at the facility, but the real story within the story is a soldier that begins to empathize for some of the prisoners. It becomes particularly heart-wrenching when the unit is forced to close and, not wanting to dehumanize her further, the soldier struggles with whether to let a prisoner go free. It’s one of the most powerful scenes in the movie. 

There are deep questions being raised in this film, if you can sit through it. I should also mention it is four hours long, too. And because I’m a glutton for punishment, I watched it all. I strongly feel that this film could have been much shorter, because the human element comes too little too late in the film. I think if you watch the first hour and the last hour, you probably won’t miss much. 

Faust (2008)

Subgenre: Fantasy, Surreal, Religious
Availability: Youtube, Netflix

Finally, this movie is probably the most accessible Russian art horror film. It is entirely in German, and it won the Golden Lion award, which is the highest award given at the Venice Film Festival (the oldest film festival in the world). This version of the German folk tale was made by Alexander Sokurov, best know for his impressive film Russian Ark. 

Russian Ark is a 90-minute movie filmed in one single take, and includes nearly 900 extras all wearing period garb. It’s the kind of thing that’s so impressive, it makes you re-evaluate your life decisions. I mention that film, because it sheds light on why his version of Faust is so interesting. 

Using time in such a unique way is not an accident for someone like Sokurov. He was Tarkovsky’s protege, and many regard Sokurov as being his spiritual heir. 

Tarkovsky, for those not familiar, is probably the most famous and accomplished Russian filmmaker, second perhaps only to Eisenstein. Ingmar Bergman believed Tarkovsky was the greatest filmmaker in the world in his day, and believed that he had figured out the language of film like no one else.

Film communicates with two things: time and movement. Those are two things that no other medium has. The closest would be music, and Werner Herzog has even said that film has more in common with music than any other medium, including photography.

Like Russian Ark, the story never stops. It has a stream-of-consciousness structure which doesn’t change its pace in any major way. It just continues, as the title character spirals outward into insanity. Sokurov doesn’t really seem to be interested in the metaphysical questions going on in the original myth, but looks at Faust more as a symbol for the great anti-hero. The devil doesn't really corrupt Faust so much as awaken a pre-existing ambition for evil.

If he set out to ask what led to the sort of madness that drives despots like Hitler to do what they do, he seems to be suggesting that the origin lies in our endless quest for rationality. Our questioning nature and curiosity gave way to the modern age, and what started out innocent enough ended in the loss of our soul. 

In fact, the first image of the film is of Faust cutting the man open to find his “soul.” Whether Sokurov is saying that the quest to find the soul is pointless because spirituality doesn’t exist, or if he is just saying that looking for it in the physical world leads one to maddening ends, I don’t now. 

But that's literally just one theme in this storyThere's so much to love in the film. For my money, the creepiest scene in the movie appears towards the end, and involves some walking dead people, a naked woman, some cats, and lots of uncomfortable silence. 

This is a puzzle film, and it’s a joy to figure out. The film goes by pretty quickly, and the character’s descent into lunacy is very well conceived and executed. I found the ending very satisfying, too, even if I don’t entirely understand everything that happened. The acting is wonderful, as are the music and set pieces. This is by far my favorite Russian horror film. 

Dark Fantasy With Really Cold Weather: Russian Horror (part 1)

It took a while, but my survey of Russian horror is finally (mostly) complete. I didn’t intend for it to take so long, but Russian horror isn’t exactly easy to come by. 

There isn’t much written about it, and there is so very little Russian horror as it turns out. I almost gave up, to be honest. I feel like the hobbits returning to the Shire. But after paying a handsome sum to an old nun with a wooden leg and the monkey stopped giving me trouble, I was able to finally watch them for myself. 

Those Russians might finally be turning the tables recently, but it turns out that, up until the 1980’s, only one bonafide horror film was made in Russia. Just one. That’s pretty crazy when you think about it. But don’t take to Twitter and complain just yet. There’s a reason.

Russian cinema has traditionally been a late-starter during every major era. The first Russian film was made in 1908, long after trick films and chase films had already become staples elsewhere. 

It wasn’t until the first World War when the Russian film industry was finally making mostly Russian films, more than any time before or since. And for the next decade or two, Russian filmmakers were doing some crazy stuff. 

Like, I dunno, inventing the concept of montage. Explaining the mechanics of editing. Kuleshov. Kino-eye. You get the picture (no pun intended).

So the legacy of Russian cinema is well-established, but what about Russian horror? Why are there no zombies or space monsters or even ghost stories in Russia? You would think that horror would be a fitting genre for a culture known for its brooding and anxious nature.

Sorry to bother you. We're just looking for your horror movies.

Well, the main reason is politics. 

Because Soviet-era art was restricted to the ideology of atheistic, Marxist materialism, it didn’t leave much room for horror at all. Anything that made reference to the supernatural was off limits, as was pretty much any notion of the uncanny. 

Horror is also very personal, and includes attacks on the body and, in general, invasions of personal space. That is why so many horror stories feature domestic spaces like homes, bedrooms, bathrooms, schools, etc. But in Soviet Russia, the concept of personal space just didn’t exist, or at least wasn’t acknowledged publicly. 

It's just one song. Call Me Maybe... you heard it? Let me just
play it for you once. Just once, I promise. Oh come on.

Marxist materialism also didn’t have much room for the irrational in general, including abnormal psychology. Horror often features themes of insanity, depression, anxiety, paranoia, etc. To a Bolshevik, this would hardly be fit for entertainment. Horror also thrives on the imminence of uncontrollable chaos (think zombies), and to the order-loving Soviet mentality, this is also counter-productive.

But having said all that, the new film industry in Russia is a lot more like the one that existed before the Revolution. It is more Westernized, and every effort is being made to get Russians a seat at the world table. A lot of countries are doing this, actually, particularly in Asia. 

Be like Hollywood long enough to build your industry, then start telling your stories. It makes good economic sense, and it’s working. Just look at Hong Kong.

One of the first big blockbusters in post-Soviet Union Russia was, in fact, a horror movie. You might say they are gearing up for some really interesting changes in aesthetics, and I’m anxious as hell to see it. 

In Part 1, I’m just looking at the big-budget, mainstream films of the last decade. And get excited, because a few of them are in English. 

Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006)

Subgenres: Dark Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Action

Night Watch and Day Watch tell the stories of two races of beings that once were at war with one another, but declared a truce that has lasted quite a long time. They have to keep each other from eating the humans, and an awful lot of effort is spent to convince one boy that he should be on one side or the other. 

It starts with a morally shocking opener: the protagonist paying a witch to curse his wife who is pregnant with another man’s child, and cause her to miscarry so that she doesn’t have to divorce him. That's pretty messed up, so already, we're into some really weird, moral territory. Some of the places the film goes from there are quite interesting, but the story suffers from being so damn confusing at times. 

The premise may be pretty straightforward, but the plot is a mess. In Ebert’s review of Night Watch, he wrote, “those who understand the plot of Night Watch should forget about the movies and get right to work on string theory.” That about sums it up, unfortunately.

But perhaps that’s not fair. The films suffer from being too many things at once. They’re not trying to be that original, at least not in the sense of doing anything new. It borrows from the Matrix, Star Wars, classic German horror films and many others. The plot is indeed exceedingly confusing, but the fun is in seeing Russian filmmakers show us what they are capable of. 

If you watch this movie, though, expect a somewhat mediocre story, with a few fun and memorable moments. The part involving something called the Gloom is really creepy and fun, as is the swirly vortex of literal chaos surrounding a woman that is cursed with bad luck. 

Not really that scary, because it’s more of an action-thriller with some horror-elements, but it’s a good throwaway popcorn flick. 

Viy (2014)
Subgenres: Dark Fantasy, Religious, Witchcraft

This move is a remake of the one and only Soviet-era horror film of the same name (which I will talk about in Part 2). The 2014 version is also loosely based on Nikolai Gogol's folk tale, though it is much more modernized. 

In fact, this movie tells a story that is very similar to the story of Russia's film industry. It begins with an Englishman that is sent into the East to map the territory, and he finds a small village that seems to be straight out of a storybook. Everyone in this town is predisposed to finding evil everywhere, not realizing they they, themselves, are being used as instruments of some devilish influence that seems to prefer things stay this way. 

You might say that this arrangement recalls the conditions for Soviet-era filmmakers that had to enlighten an audience that didn't want to be enlightened. There is such an atmosphere of fear and paranoia that Salem-esque scenario doesn't seem that far-fetched. 

The original plot involving a monk that reluctantly prays for three nights over a witch's body only takes up about twenty minutes of this film. The rest of the film is like all of the hypothetical stuff that might have led to the need for such a ritual to even happen. There are some truly scary parts of this film, mostly in the middle. Actually, though it is very rare to say, this is a film where the middle is probably the strongest. The exposition in the beginning is slow and sometimes confusing, and the ending might strike some viewers as being at best anti-climactic, and at worst cheating. 

This feels more like a Pirates of the Carribean film, with a little Pan's Labyrinth thrown in. My experience might have also been aided by a better translation, because the version I watched was badly subtitled, and even had some Russian dubbed over parts of the film that were clearly in English. Which reminds me: Tywin Lannister is in this movie (for all you GOT fans). 

Devil’s Pass

Subgenres: Found Footage, Survival, Sci-Fi

This might be the most fun I’ve had watching a found footage film. The Blair Witch Project had a good story, but wasn’t that scary, and it was nauseating to watch. A lot of found footage films are nauseating to watch, but this one really wasn’t. 

In Russia, there was a famous story involving the death of a group of hikers in the Northern Ural Mountains, in a place known as Devil’s Pass. This movie is the found footage recovered from some American film students that set out to investigate the disappearance on their own.

Now, if you can get over the premise of some unknown filmmakers from America going to ground zero of the Russian equivalent of Area 51, and you accept that, then this will be be a very enjoyable film for you. Get over that hump, and you’re there.

The characters are drawn very well, each with a distinct personality, and they are introduced to us in very interesting ways. One of them is seen for the first time while sitting in front of his editing station, hitting the space bar to play clips from an interview with a woman that is giving us the official story of what happened at Devil’s Pass. It cuts back and forth between her comments and his, conveying not just the information for the plot, but also tells us a good deal about him. This sort of scene also tells viewers like yours truly that they don’t intend to waste my time. I kinda like that.

From a found footage film standpoint, the film sticks to convention, but is smoother around the edges. For instance, the leader of the project is unsurprisingly accused of being the author of some of the hijinks that ensue, and it is believed that she is creating them on purpose for the film. Not an original trope, but it’s very effective.

This is a found footage film in which the footage is (thankfully, for a change) shot in HD. No more graininess or artifacts to add to the nausea. The locations in this film are really very beautiful, and watching it, you almost forget it’s a found footage film until the moments between takes when the characters speak candidly. 

It’s hard to tell a suspenseful story without at least some physical action, and revealing that action in a found footage film is a delicate balance. On the one hand, there’s the frustrating, migraine-inducing visual chaos that is the most likely real-life result of a camera operator trying not to get eaten, and on the other, the careful staging of the camera so that we see who gets eaten. If that sounds challenging, that’s because it totally is.

It’s also a challenge to explain why we’re seeing what we’re seeing, when most people would just turn the damn camera off. It’s what I would do if I was in a situation where I might get eaten, but that's just me.

The movie gets pretty scary in the second half, and it had a very satisfying ending for me, especially considering the fact that found footage films are notorious for having terrible endings. Can you name a found footage film that had a satisfying ending? The Blair Witch Project just sort of ends. Same thing with Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield. No ending.

So I definitely recommend this film. It doesn’t hit every note, but the finished song is more impressive than what has come before it.

I wish I could recommend the rest of these, but I don't really think I can. But in case they're your cup of tea...

Captivity 

Subgenres: Survival, Suspense, Body

I loved the look of this movie, with its gold and red palette, but not much else at all. Get a pretty American girl and put her into an unbelievable scenario that fails to create tension and, at least for this reviewer, has one of the most disappointingly predictable endings. It is in English, though, and you may like it if you like movies like Hostel. It’s pretty straighforward, but nothing to write home about.

Phobos - Club of Fear

Subgenres: Survival, Paranormal

This film chooses an amazing location in which to tell the story, but then it deprives the audience for a full hour of any action whatsoever. It fails to raise any stakes or give us any scares at all, then undermines the whole thing with a terrible ending. The WWII-era backdrop could have made this film promising, had it been better written and at least competently executed. Watch if you liked Final Destination, but don’t expect it to be as good.

Trackman

Subgenres: Slasher, Thriller, Survival

Another story that takes place in a great location and even has a promising and simple scenario, but it goes absolutely nowhere. The scenario involving some bank robbers at the mercy of a giant maniac in a subterranean sewer system eventually takes us through tedium and farce until we at last are rooting for the Trackman to just kill the characters already. It’s never a good sign when the villain is accidentally the good guy.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll discuss some of the more artistic and underground horror films in Russia.

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.