Brocéliande

After a few misfires, we are still waiting for THE French horror movie that the critics will certainly vilify, but will launch a new trend. Not this time. Doug Headline can't be accused of not being knowledgable in the genre (He is editor of a high-class fantasy imprint, has worked for legendary magazine Starfix.), but why a scenario that uses EVERY cliché in the book (except maybe the Odious Comic relief) ? Why make it so predictable ? Even the nods towards Argento fails flat. It's not even an euro-teen movie like the German "Anatomy", much better, just a compilation of scenes that barely seems to have any relation one with the other and features LOTS of plot holes. The whole "Celtic" aspect is barely touched. And, after a "revenation" painfully predictable, the screenplay offers us a boring, endless chase in a subterranean necropole which seems bigger than Parisian catacombs. I really wanted to love this film. Really. But even a mother would not. Oh, and writer Valerio Evangelisti was supposed to have a cameo, but I vainly looked for him.

Yes, absolutely dreadful, And this coming from someone who loves bad movies - but there's a limit. I enjoy all sorts of horror/suspense films, and have seen some wonderful work from European film makers. Broceliande is sadly not among those those wonderful pieces of film-making. The camera work is worse than amateurish. Not the fashionable, shaky MTV "cameraman needs Ritalin" type of camera work so many film-makers use to camouflage their lack of talent. This is simply bad frame composition and terrible image composition. The acting is farcical when it is not entirely two-dimensional. The dialogues are stilted and unnatural - even more so than your usual run-of-the-mill horror/suspense film delving into pseudo-mysticism. I think that what put me off the most was the horribly choreographed fight scenes at the end of the film. These were bad to the point of being ludicrous. I've seen what a small budget can do, and it can do wonders. This was just bad film-making. Very, very sad.

What should i say? I only saw this flick for curiosity, and this is truly a shame... I grew up in Brittany with stories of celtic legends, and spent 5 years in Rennes, the town in which this film is said to take place... Shame that not any actor nor camera from this flick ever arrived in Rennes. They could at least have chosen a likely town, or a likely forest, but nothing even SEEM like Brittany nor Rennes... And calling it a film about celtic legends is really making a fool of the audience. Besides those details, it could have been a good film, but it's crap. Silly scenario, silly characters and no originality. Definitely to avoid.

The actresses are cute and the sets, while simple, quite OK. Apart from this, there is nothing to save from this movie. Incredibly bad acted, dumb to tears dialogues, all-too-expected plot, a lot of goofs and inconsistencies (for instance, a pretty young girl gets hits in the head by a morning star and not only she survives, but barely with a scratch !)... To make it short because it does not worth more, even the fans of the genre can avoid it.

Another try, another miss. France may be doomed for not being able to produce a good horror movie. I mean... the least they could do was to shoot the movie in the forest of Brocéliande, but even the forest is fake ! It was shot near Paris ! The subject is useless, the actors are really insignificant and the text makes you wish you were deaf. Nothing could save it.

Bad... to the bone. I wasn't warned. I want my money back.