Le peuple des ténèbres

I rented this movie last night with a friend of mine because I had heard it was sooooooo awful on this website and wanted a bad movie to laugh at.

I was suprised to find out it is actually a decent horror movie. People who say this is one of the worst movies ever must have only seen 5 movies in their whole lives and they all must have been in the top ten here at the imdb.

I do have a couple of problems with it.

1)The CGI monsters are very fake looking in a few scenes, this really detracts from suspense.

2)They show too much of the monsters too early on in the movie. They should have watched The Others where suspense was created by not showing The Others till the very end.

Other then that I thought this was a decent horror movie, what else do people expect out of a horror flick then this? It was kinda creepy and interesting to watch the people die, the plot was decent involving the whole psychology aspect. People who think this is one of the worst movies ever need to watch Fear Dot Com or any of the Freddy/Jason movies after number 3 or so.

7 / 10

Well-crafted thriller that plays upon night terrors and the old "monster in the closet" legend. An ambitious, sensible young psychology student is occasionally frightened by memories of old childhood nightmares. She, along with a group of strangers, eventually come together believing they were all traumatized and "tagged" as children by mysterious night demons, the very same demons who may be returning to complete some ominous, unfinished business. Occasionally spooky thriller holds your interest the way it should, but it never really tops its effective opening sequence, or gets informative enough to be really satisfying. **

This film has it's good and bad sides. There's a lot of potential and beautiful scenes in this movie. I don't know how they managed to find that country scene with mists, the moon, a country road and everything just perfect!

It also succeeds in scaring the viewer quite a few times with startling attacks and creepy camera work. I would even have liked to see more of this, but true, it might become repetitive, and we know how how we hate repetitive stuff in the world of the short attention span! Also sound is used to scare, like the telephone ringing in the 'Exorcist', at a tense moment.

It also slightly over uses the "monster coming to get the camera" scene, where a scary monster comes at the camera (/viewer). These are good methods of scaring people.

There are some terrible logic errors and they do spoil the film for 'thinking' people. If it was a real scenario her boyfriend, for example, wouldn't let her out of his sight! Much of the plot relies on the people isolating themselves from others for anything to take place. The strange thing is, even though they know they are in danger, they still go off on their own, where no one is there to help them. Whenever there are people present, nothing happens.

This flaw ruined the film a bit for me. I kept thinking "why is she doing THAT", when nothing would happen if she did THIS. Very frustrating... but I guess they were out to make a movie about people being attacked when they were alone, and this is what they ended up with. (The British "Lenny Henry Show" did a great parody of this kind of movie, with the actors always saying: "We've got to split up, it's more likely we get chopped up that way!" and "oh-oh, the music's changed, that must mean - here comes the bad guy!")

Also, without spoiling anything, there are some places where people just seem to willingly ignore the facts. Like when a window is broken -inwards-, into a closed chamber. No one even noticed that, and one is left asking - and then what? Just another missing person from a locked room? How many of these can there be? Where are the paranormal investigators when you need them? Where are the university geeks want to become the "ghost busters"? They investigated stuff like this in "The Entity" and that was supposed to be based on a true story.

Coming back to the positive side, I can imagine the actress playing the main part was chosen because she bears a striking resemblance to a young Mia Farrow in "Rosemary's Baby". Those types are always believable when scared to death. One seems to identify with a skinny (almost anorexic (was that possibly the comment they were making with her vomiting in the railways station?) sweet young thing. Her boyfriend is far too conservative for his own good. Letting her sleep alone in a double bed! What kind of gentleman is that, in this day and age! Just think: If her impotent shrink had been played by Bruce Willis he'd have followed up on her story and we'd have seen some aliens splattered all over the subway! - Now that'd been juicy! Sorry wrong film. That's "Mimic".

"They" is one of these movies that end up being rather annoying the more you see it. From all sides... and I agree there was a LOT of potential in there. Just not quite enough attention to detail.

Still: *** /5

An excellent little horror-movie. It probably did not too well at the box office (not even with the "Wes Craven Presents" attachment), but this is worthy to check out. Don't expect stupid, obnoxious teenagers who can't act in the leadroles, don't wait for silly, embarrassing one-liners, don't relay on cheap CGI (not even on expensive CGI, for that matter). What we get is a tense horrorthriller, well acted throughout by a cast of fairly unknowns, which relays on atmosphere, minimal special effects and leaving a lot to the imagination of the audience (which, as most of true horror-fans know, can't be beaten by the most expensive and amazing FX). To my opinion, great horrorfilms are those which are taken seriously, by the creators, the actors, by everyone involved. Take a look at Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist(1973), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Halloween (1979), The Thing (1982) etc. (to name only a few of 60ties, 70ties and 80ties horror classics). What they have in common is seriousness. They might contain some humour, but it never takes over the movies to a degree that the audience is allowed to lean back in their seats and grab a next handful of popcorn in anticipation of the next shocking sequence... What these movies are capable of is to keep the audience at the edge of their seats, to scare the audience into believing and fearing what its sees and not sees but make believe seeing it) and to make the audience go home afterwards with a feeling of unease. That is what THIS movie does very well: make the audience uneasy, because it deals with a primal fear: darkness and what may be IN the darkness. Its a little gem, and i think it will be considered as a "classic" in years to come.

Having suffered from night terrors since age 3, that progressed to night terrors with sleep walking by 5, I was thoroughly creeped out by the story line and since I still have night terrors on a regular basis I thought the idea that your marked was very interesting and a scary thought. Decent horror flick, not a blood fest, but the kind of movie that gives you the willies, especially if your afraid of the dark and suffer from night terrors. Worth a watch! ;)