Clash

This is a tedious pretentious boring thing.It 's obvious that the lack of a screenplay is sorely felt.David Lynch could transcend that in his "Eraserhead" .The director here cannot.The prologue deals with a semblance of thriller :a girl has to cross the border with mysterious stuff,and they promised her a beautiful reward .The director uses close shots ,one can wonder why.

Then the girl has to hide in a disused factory:then ,out of the blue, childhood fears come back to haunt her at night as she has horrible nightmares.As if it were not enough , a strange man (Pierre Clementi) tries to catch her in the daylight (unless he is part of her dreams ,who knows?).Sometimes the door is locked,sometimes it's not. Some may think it's art,I call it arty.

This film has been a hot internet topic in China for the last few years, although they didn't know the film title. In 2007 a post appeared in one of the largest Chinese online forums, requesting more information about this film, thousands of people commented on it and tried to find the film title since then. The film was dubbed to Chinese and shown on cable TV channels in the 1990s, according to the post, it has become many people's childhood nightmare and they wanted to know more about it. Unfortunately, the dubbed version has translated the title to something related to aliens, thus no one was able to find the original title of the film, not until 2014, in spite of all the efforts. People shared what they remembered about the scenes in this movie, more people got interested even haven't seen it. It became a legend, a mystery no one could solve. 2014, someone claimed to own a VHS tape but he refused to release it, unless he was paid. Finally, in 2015, someone announced the title thousands or even millions of people were looking for : Clash (1984), France. It was a very bizarre journey for an otherwise unnoticed film. I wonder if the cast and director know about the story and what they will feel about it.

Actually this is not a horror movie. This can be classified as Surreal Fantasy. So we need not worry about a proper story or explanation for everything. This movie is dreamlike with a tint of creepiness. Those are the key ingredients of a surreal movie. This movie has those key elements. So it is throughly enjoyable to a surreal fan like me. So friends, don't care about negative reviews. If you are a surreal / fantasy fan, you will definitely like this movie.

Utterly low-budget-horror-wannabe movie telling the story of a young girl lost in the middle of nowhere, chased a by a strange man. I'm not even sure I understood all the subplots involved...

Brian Yuzna fans, move over, it is not a gory-fast-and-furious horror gem. CLASH is rather slow, concentrating on the atmosphere more than the effects.

Rather unusual for a French horror movie, Raphael Delpard chose an obscure plot mixed with some gruesome effects (good ones, by the way), full of incoherences, but...it's working, as an essay on arthouse fantasy movie. Bizarre atmosphere -shot in an abandoned warehouse-, foggy sets...it's supposed to be the representation of a nightmare. None of what's happening is rational or explainable.

At the end, it depends on your mood: it's either irritating or clever in some parts, amateurish or made in a highly professional way of making you think it's amateurish. Catherine Alric (who bears a frightening resemblance with Catherine Deneuve) is impressive as the young heroïne and so is -Pierre Clementi as the stalker. Though this movie is really really hard to find you should give it a try if you can. A kinda thinking man's horror movie.

But if you're looking for a real french horror movie, very scary, full of gory effects and a very special screenplay, try the awesome DEMON DANS L'ILE. It's a masterpiece of fear.