Them (2006, David Moreau and Xavier Palud)

I've become convinced that foreign horror filmmakers have the art down a lot more effectively than American ones. It would certainly explain a lot-- why all the Asian horror movies run big creepy rings around their stateside peers, why the U.K. is capable of weaving these terrific terror tapestries like The Descent and the 28 Whatevers Later series while we're forced to deal with The Ruins, and, most of all, why France got Them and we merely got The Strangers. It's all so unfair. I want good movies too!

See, anyone who read a review of last year's The Strangers got a whole earful of Them, a movie critics liked to talk up as being serious inspiration for the Liv-Tyler-gets-stalked-by-grocery-sack-clad-killers horror flick. As Them got more and more into the (admittedly lean) meat of its story, I was able to see just where everyone was coming from. In fact, I'd be inclined to brand The Strangers an out-and-out ripoff-- that is, if I got the impression that the director of the strangers had ever seen a foreign movie.

But enough of all that. Them is a wonderful little curiosity. It exists in no larger sphere, serves no larger illustrative purpose-- it simply IS, this nasty little Romanian-countryside-home-invasion thriller. Olivia Bonamy and Michael Cohen play a couple, tucked away for a night in at their idyllic rural country house, when (naturally) things go kooky. One break-in, one leg injury, and several uber-creepy hooded figures later, they're fighting for their lives.

I'm particularly fond of horror movies that don't telegraph their scares-- much like a sitcom without a laugh track, a horror movie without a gauntlet of empty jump scares and nervy string swells allows you to process everything on your own. It's less cheap this way-- the scare feels genuine, earned. That's one thing I must credit The Strangers for-- that scene where a masked phantasm materializes without fanfare behind Liv Tyler is a minor scare-flick masterwork, beautiful in its simplicity, stunning in its creep-out factor. Them thrives on these little moments, and it ramps the sinister quotient up considerably. Shadows pass through the foreground and creep up the stairs. There's an incredibly subtle moment of tremendous menace where one of our protagonists lets the other into the bedroom, and we catch the briefest glimpse of a hooded figure stalking down the corridor. It's such a fleeting moment that it doesn't register until it passes, and it's worth its weight in screams.

It's simply terrific work. It's not particularly disturbing, and far from gruesome, but it's so suspenseful, so unrelentingly eerie that it goes off like an absolute firecracker. (I haven't even mentioned the opening scene-- what a magnificent sliver of horror cinema! The stuff nightmares are made of.) And from potent prologue to abrupt denoument, Them doesn't waste a scene of its lean (77 minutes) runtime. The men behind this movie went on to helm the American J-horror remake The Eye. Please, please don't hold it against them.

Rating: ****1/2 (out of five)