Horrorfest 2017: Them

Now on to 2006's THEM, a French/Romanian home-invasion thriller from directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud. This is another favorite of William Friedkin's. I went into it dragging my feet a little because I'm kind of sick of home-invasion movies. There's always a weird dynamic where you're invited to enjoy watching nice people attacked for no reason. You might say this is no different from any other horror movie, but I feel like in many of the films in this genre over the last couple decades, the movies tend to lean a little more sadistically on random violence against innocents rather than deriving horror from the plot or anything like that.

All that said, of course, when you write something off without having seen it, sometimes you're surprised, and that was the case with THEM, which I ended up enjoying. It is the usual thing – a young couple (Olivia Bonamy and Michael Cohen) retire for a weeked in the country at a big, isolated house, only to be attacked by rarely glimpsed assailants who seem to at first have the house surrounded, and then begin breaking inside.

The movie scored points with me by focusing on suspense rather than on violence and brutality. Also, it's worth sticking with until the end because the last shot is particularly chilling. It's somewhat reminiscent of the big Hollywood movie THE STRANGERS from 2008, except way, way better.