Review by Keri O’Shea
If, like me, repeatedly seeing people GETTING FUCKING TIED TO CHAIRS in horror movies makes you weep soundlessly into your hands at such a singular lack of imagination, then Village of Shadows might well have something to offer. Atmospheric supernatural horror often gets overlooked (or botched) by low-budget filmmakers, but first-time feature director Fouad Benhammou has gone for it and aims his sights higher than found footage or CCTV. The pay-off is an engaging, spooky horror story with period elements, and it all comes together with some interesting exposition.
All of this, yet it stems from an all-too familiar opening plot device. It just goes to show – it’s not where you start, but where you go with a story that makes it effective, or otherwise. Two carfuls of twentysomethings are heading off for a break at a cottage owned by one of their number, in a remote village called Ruiflec in rural France. Unbeknownst to them, we the audience have already seen something mysterious happening in this place, during the time of the Nazi Occupation. We don’t know what, exactly – but we have been privy to the effect it had on the German soldiers stationed there, and we get the distinct impression that whatever it is hasn’t gone away…so, when it becomes clear that Ruiflec doesn’t like to yield up its visitors, it’s down to Lila, and sisters Emma and Marion to try and understand why.
The gradual reveal of the story of Ruiflec is a real highlight of the film for me. Without spoilering, Village of Shadows contains some plot elements I recognised (and enjoyed) in preceding horrors, not least of which is the notion of an evil which simply reflects cruelty and perpetuates it – not that this excuses or reduces the scariness of any threat present. The village itself is an effective location which at several key moments achieves the pleasing skin-crawl effect possible with this type of horror; the fact that so much of the action takes place in the dark of the night no doubt helps build this impression. The acting here is consistently strong too: Christa Theret, the actress playing Emma, is a big deal in her native country and she turns in some convincing fright, but perhaps my favourite performance belongs to Ornella Boulé as Marion. Despite her façade of resilience and coolness, it becomes apparent that there is more to her, maybe even something sinister. Waiting to see if that is so? That made her very engaging.
Village of Shadows does have some flaws, of course. One of the real pitfalls for first-time directors is that they struggle to be ruthless about shortening or cutting scenes, especially when they know how hard it was to get the scene in question completed, or feel that the scene means a great deal to them personally (and with so many of these projects, the director is also the editor is also the writer is…) In this movie, there are some points during the mid-point of the film which sagged a little on the way to the excellent big reveal at the close. I wouldn’t say it was enough to fundamentally weaken the film and I remained interested in what was going on; it’s just that some judicious trimming would have meant less risk to the slow-build of tension and to the coherence of the at-times intricate plot.
Overall though, Village of Shadows is a successful and (these days) unusual horror film, a modern French horror movie which doesn’t spill a drop of blood or involve a scene where a woman gets her head shaved. What it communicated to this reviewer was that type of on-screen dread which is so enjoyable in much older films like The Legend of Hell House. Body horror is icky, ordeal horror is gruelling and repellent, but only supernatural horror truly has the creep factor, so with an intriguing premise behind it all we have a pleasingly-creepy yarn. Definitely worth a look.