Where was this film hidden that it took me 8 years to see it? Director Gilles Marchand has made three feature films, three shorts and a TV series, and is basically a screenwriter, author of around thirty titles. Thanks to his gift to turn ideas into screenplays, Marchand creates a story that, on the surface, is the rushed and forced initiation rite of two French children who spend a holiday with their father, but it is above all a bona fide paranormal horror drama. As the elements of the genre are cleverly distributed throughout the story in a very intelligent way, it takes a while to realize that what makes us follow the film to the end is the mystery of a disfigured man who haunts the child protagonist throughout the story.
Jérémie Elkaïm plays a Frenchman close to turning 40 who works in Sweden and invites his sons Tom (Dorp) and Benjamin (Voorde) to visit him. Once there, he takes them into the forest and the children realize that they have been practically kidnapped by their father (or is he really their father? As Benjamin suggests) and that he is determined to introduce little Tom to the world of paranormal matters. Tom is 10 years old and does not understand why his father is interested in him exercising his gift for extrasensory perception and, on top of that, showing him that they are very similar in that sense. However, the father's mission is more complicated than what if appears to be. The rest of the plot focuses on the rebellion of Benjamin, the pre-adolescent son, and reaches levels of accelerated tension.
Four factors are outstanding in this drama: Marchand's assured direction, the convoluted script he wrote with his collaborator Dominik Moll, the performances of all three protagonists (highlighting the impeccable work of little Timothé vom Dorp) and the majestic photography of the great Jeanne Lapoirie, who captures all the splendor of the forests and lakes of Sweden. The four elements combine to make a very good film that has been forgotten, perhaps because it lacks blood and shocks.
