Behind the Couch

Adapted from Alexis Laipsker’s novel, and written by Annelyse Batrel and Ludovic Lefebvre, The Soul Eater is the latest offering from Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, who burst onto the scene with the infamous Inside (2007), a major title in the New French Extremity wave at the turn of the 21st century. Their work since, including blistering titles such as Livid (2011), Among the Living (2014) and The Deep House (2021), has demonstrated their willingness to push boundaries and step outside of convention. Theirs is a wholly distinctive approach to genre. Part gripping police procedural, part Gallic Gothic shocker - with shadowy traces of Folk Horror present in some striking imagery - The Soul Eater follows two detectives who are sent to the sleepy French mountain town of Roquenoir. Elizabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen), an inspector in the National Police, is investigating a series of gruesome murder-suicides, and Franck de Rolan (Paul Hamy), a cop from the other French polic...

Written and directed by Mathieu Turi, The Deep Dark may not be a direct adaptation of the work of HP Lovecraft, but it is certainly a love letter to him, and its narrative unfurls within a world in which the Cthulhu mythos exists (with nods to the Necronomicon, Cthulhu, the Great Old Ones and the ‘mad Arab’ Abdul Alhazred). Set in Northern France in the 1950s, it tells of a group of miners who are tasked with escorting a professor deep underground so he can collect data for his research. It soon becomes evident, however, that the professor has an ulterior motive, and the discovery of an ancient crypt unleashes a primordial evil... Many of Lovecraft's stories tell of the existential horror experienced by his characters whose discovery of forbidden knowledge reveals unspeakable, incomprehensible truths about human existence, throwing everything we thought we knew into question. Inter-dimensional doorways are conjured and all manner of unknowable cosmic horrors lumber/crawl/slither t...

When they move to a quiet suburban neighbourhood, the Ferals appear to be a very normal family. However, they have a dark secret concerning their teenaged son Philémon, and as he begins to fall for his neighbour Camila, his thirst for human blood becomes harder to resist, threatening the family's well rehearsed cover... Read my full review at Eye for Film . 

2014 Dir. John Erick Dowdle Much like the zombie film, the sheer volume of found-footage horror titles, and their varying degrees of quality, has made audiences wary. The risk of experiencing tired retreads consisting of nauseating, shaky camerawork, amateurish acting and low-budget production values is reasonably high. Every so often though, one comes along that reminds you just how exciting and terrifying they can be, and how, when done well, it’s a format which offers filmmakers the opportunity to tell engaging stories in a way that makes them much more immediate and immersive. While As Above So Below is not without its flaws, it is ultimately a very entertaining and frequently nightmarish title pertaining to be the footage of a doomed excursion into the very bowels of hell itself. Part Indian Jones style adventure, part religious horror, it’s a fascinating concept that is for the most part brilliantly atmospheric and expertly executed by director John Erick Dowdle (no str...

2011 Dirs. Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo With Livid , the makers of Inside , one of the most intense and shocking of a recent slew of New Wave Gallic horror films, venture down a more fantastical, though no less traumatic route for their sophomore offering. When Lucy (Chloé Coulloud) begins training as a care worker for the elderly, she visits the imposing and isolated home of an ancient, barely alive former ballet teacher called Madame Jessel. The young woman hears rumours of forbidden treasures hidden within the house, and when she tells her boyfriend and his brother, the three decide to break in, steal the treasure, and leave town to begin anew somewhere else. Needless to say when they enter Madame Jessel’s vast and eerie abode, things don’t go according to plan, and the three find themselves at the mercy of a powerful witch with vampiric tendencies… Maury and Bustillo’s screenplay takes time to introduce and establish the three friends. They’re from a small fishing ...

2010 Dir. Franck Richard For several years now, some of the most extreme, controversial, sadistic contributions to horror cinema have been coming out of France. Kick started by the likes of Alex Aja’s influential Switchblade Romance/Haute Tension , other titles in this ‘new wave’ of French horror, or ‘New French Extremity’, have included the likes of Inside/À l'intérieur, Sheitan, Ils, Martyrs , Frontier(s) , the Belgian film Calvaire and the work of Gaspar Noé. The latest horror offering from France, the folk-horror tinged  The Pack,  offers twists, turns, grotesquely violent imagery and a socio-political subtext about the plight of rural farming communities left in the wake of industrialisation.  Beginning as a tautly wound riff on the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Wrong Turn and The Hills Have Eyes , an impetuous young woman, Charlotte (Émilie Dequenne), is driving through deepest, darkest rustic France when she picks up a hitchhiker. Stopping at a r...

2009 Dirs. Yannick Dahan and Bejamin Rocher When a high-ranking police detective is found murdered by a gang of homicidal mobsters, a small group of his closest colleagues on the force take it upon themselves to avenge his death. Heavily armed and determined to see justice done, they manage to infiltrate the upper floors of the suburban high-rise apartment block that serves as the criminals’ hideout. But during the raid things go wrong and the cops find themselves overcome by the gang, who take them prisoner and begin to torture them.   Meanwhile, on ground level, the gang members become aware of a strange disturbance in the streets immediately surrounding the building, with the sounds of explosions and sirens filling the air. Incredibly, it becomes apparent that the commotion is being caused by ever-growing crowds of crazed people with a hunger for human flesh. It’s not long before the gang of criminals and the captive cops realize they are trapped together on the top fl...

2008 Dir. Fabrice Du Welz The lives of Jeanne and Paul Bellmer (Emmanuelle Béart and Rufus Sewell) are thrown into chaos when they think they see their son, thought drowned in the Southeast Asia tsunami in 2004, in a film they watch about orphans living in the jungles of Burma. They set off into an impenetrable heart of darkness in search of an elusive and perhaps unattainable truth, aided only by human traffickers who are intent on exploiting their heartache. Stranded in the middle of a strange and hostile country, the couple are besieged by a band of feral children and begin to lose sight of the hope they once so desperately clung to. ‘When someone dies a horrible death, their spirit becomes confused and angry. It becomes…Vinyan.’ Vinyan unfolds as a strange reflection of Don’t Look Now in its exploration of a couple’s grief, denial, hope and obsession as they try to come to terms with the death of their child. The story tracks Jeanne and Paul’s personal descent into the ma...

2009 Dir. Pascal Laugier Anna (Morjana Alaoui) and Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï), two young women with revenge on their minds, track down a family who held one of them captive as a youngster. Their quest for vengeance and knowledge leads them on a gut-wrenching and depraved journey into the dark recesses of pain and suffering, anguish and torture. Brutal. Shocking. Intense. Provocative. Raw. Unflinching. Disturbing. Numbing. Powerful. Unforgettable. These are just a few of the words that have been used to describe the jaw dropping spectacle that is Martyrs . The thing is though, while they are all accurate, no words can really be utilised to fully prepare you for the visceral onslaught you will undergo while watching this breathtakingly extreme film. With its astoundingly sadistic violence, Laugier's film is part of the current wave of extreme horror coming out of France, and firmly rooted in the realms of ‘Torture Porn’. Directed with ferocity, it strives to provoke and stimu...

1960 Dir. Georges Franju Christiane (Edith Scob) is horrifically disfigured in a car accident caused by her father's reckless driving. Her father, famed surgeon Dr Génessier, is driven by guilt and despair to abduct young women, surgically remove their faces and attempt to graft them onto Christiane’s own scarred face. When Christiane realises what her father is doing, she decides that the time has come to show him that he cannot control everything… This was Franju’s feature film debut. Preceding it was a series of short films and documentaries, notably The Blood of the Beasts , a documentary about an abattoir. While not the first film to follow the exploits of a deranged surgeon, Eyes Without a Face was certainly the first to do so in such a poetic, provocative and literate way. It addresses notions of identity, morality, obsession and hope. Written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, writers whose earlier work such as Celle Qui N’Etart Plus and D’entre les Morts had ...