We’re still in France here?
Main Cast: Karina Testa, Patrick Ligardes
Director: Xavier Gens
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
Originally intended as one of the 8 Films to Die For at Horrorfest 2007, FRONTIER(S) was given a one-week release in 10 US theaters after receiving an NC-17 rating, and then included as a bonus film in the 8 Films line-up that year. Personally, I don’t see any reason for it to have been included. I mean, it’s got a lot of the things the 8 Films are said to have that kept them out of theaters in the first place: it’s disturbing, it’s graphic, but let’s face it, the majority of these movies wouldn’t have exactly lit up the sky with their brilliance. And to me, FRONTIER(S) is no different. One of the blurbs on the back of the package reads “The French answer to HOSTEL and SAW…” but that’s not true. If it’s the French answer to anything, it would be TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and that’s, what, 50+ years too late?
Amidst a series of political riots, five young friends decide to hightail it out of France and head for peaceful living in Amsterdam. But first they need cash, so they pull off a heist–which is never really explained –during which one of them, Sami, gets shot. His sister Yasmine and her ex-boyfriend Alex take him to the hospital, while their friends Tom and Farid escape with the loot. They’ll meet up with them later.
Sami dies at the hospital, and Yasmine and Alex take off for the hostel which is their rendezvous point.
Meanwhile, Tom and Farid have already arrived and been assaulted and chased away, crashed their car, and are heading into an abandoned mine in search of a way out (?!?). When Alex and Yasmine arrive, the proprietors tell them the hostel is full, and that Tom and Farid have gone to stay at the cabin just up the road. We were headed there ourselves, they say, we’ll show you where it is.
The house and hostel are owned and operated by a family of cannibals, led by their patriarch Von Geisler, an ex-Nazi who wants to keep his family’s blood pure, but knows the time is coming when they’ll need outside help. It just so happens, Yasmine is pregnant, so she’ll make a fine addition to the family.
Yasmine has other ideas.
I tried to get into this movie, I really wanted to, but as soon as Yasmine and Alex arrived at the house and it became clear this family has the entire area on lockdown, the TCM corollaries just become too much to ignore, and from that moment on I wasn’t watching anymore to see how good FRONTIER(S) might be, but instead was looking for more TCM similarities. It all came to a head, for me, when Von Geisler and his “children” gather at the dinner table with Yasmine as their guest of honor, and serve Tom as the main course. Yeah, sounds familiar.
It’s not enough that 80% of the American horror movies you see are remakes or sequels of older movies, but, Christ, even the French are doing it now? You know, I didn’t like this movie the first time it was remade and called HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, why would I like it any more just because it’s in French and I have the added bonus of having to read it? Granted, I do enjoy reading, but if I’m going to don my reading glasses to watch a movie, I expect that movie to be worth it. This was not.
It was bad enough seeing so many similarities in tone and structure and plot, but then to include the friggin’ dinner scene, I mean come on, man, that’s the best you could do? And in another glaring similarity, the dinner scene comes toward the end of the movie and, after what seems no more than an hour AT MOST, the sun has come up. Are these people eating dinner at 4:00 in the morning, or what!?!?
FRONTIER(S) was written and directed by Xavier Gens and while I haven’t seen any of his other work, I certainly hope it’s more original than this.
The star of the movie was Karina Testa as Yasmine. She pulls it off all right, I guess, although I saw her as strong and single-minded from the beginning, so to get to the end of the movie, she really didn’t have to go through much development. She’s effective as an emotional basket case in the scenes where she has to be one, but in my opinion that was overplayed at the end when she’s a wobbling zombie.
Honestly, I’m not sure there’s anything the cast or Gens could have done to make me sit up and take note of this movie, because, for me, it was ruined as soon as it became “isolated family of cannibals terrorizes young people in wrong place at wrong time.” What, AGAIN??? Sigh. Okay, I guess, lemme see what you got. Because no matter how the details may differ, the bigger picture is the same, and I’ve already seen that movie, a number of times.
There was plenty of visceral action, and the gore was present by the bucketful, but in the end, FRONTIER(S) is really nothing more than TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, set in France, with Nazis. Yawn.
More 8 Films to Die For
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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