I’m on the fence about this French horror film. I like the general ideas presented throughout the movie; the actors are very good and the look and feel of the production are high. The way characters interact frequently threw me off though.
Justine shows up on her first day at veterinarian school where her older sister Alexia also attends. She’s a quiet girl, a vegetarian looking to fit into this new environment. When she is pressured to eat meat, she ends up developing a taste for human flesh. Yeah, her freshman year is an intense one.
The first odd thing to me is how buck wild veterinarian school is in France. It’s like a college campus in Florida, with kids partying hard every chance they get and the hazing, which looks like it started generations before based on the chants and songs, is something to behold. It’s like the university’s social life revolves around Greek life without having sororities or fraternities to pledge to. This is all on me as this is just something that doesn’t match my narrow conception of what this kind of school is like. No idea how accurate it is.
The one thing that really made me question things is how Justine and Alexia interact once things start getting wild. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on with Justine even if you don’t know the synopsis of the movie. Alexia gets involved as things escalate but there’s this odd acceptance from Justine that doesn’t make sense to me. There are a few obvious questions she should be asking (You’re oddly ok with this, why? How do you know about this? Why did you do that? Whoa, why are you doing that?) and it’s never asked. Instead of talking, there are just, odd looks and…running away? It really takes me out of it. I kept thinking of all this stuff that should be happening to ground people’s natural reactions instead of things just pushing forward until the end.
That said, I really like the ending. It makes the subtle background info from the start of the movie come full circle into a new light. That’s always fun to see and is good storytelling. There’s some real skin-crawling stuff in here too. The makeup for Justine’s rash is incredibly real and watching her scratch like a maniac makes it impossible not to have your own visceral reaction to it. Violence and gore are pretty minimal, but there is some gruesome stuff shown and it looks very realistic. This will make a lot of people feel very uncomfortable. So despite my misgivings about how the story is told, overall it is a successful horror movie.
This neat little religious horror movie is from Poland. I’ve seen one movie from writer and director Bartosz M. Kowalski a few years ago (also on Netflix) called Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight. That’s a good homage to Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hellhole feels like a more mature and advanced effort from Mr. Kowalski. He’s growing in his craft and I think he’ll be able to make even greater films in the future.
In this macabre tale that takes place in 1987, we follow undercover police agent Marek into a monastery. There have been a lot of disappearances around the area and the rumors and evidence point to the monastery being the hub of it. Apparently, they handle a lot of exorcisms. Anything more than one exorcism once in a while is a lot if you ask me and these guys have blown way past that number only for the women to all die in their soul-saving efforts.
This movie does a really good job of setting up and exploring the mystery. Everything feels off right away and Marek is a great vessel for the audience to go through this nightmare with. He’s easy to like and root for. The atmosphere is fantastic, the oppressive fog of the area practically becomes a character. I like the pace of the movie, there’s a good amount of suspense and psychological horror. This doesn’t rely on violence or gore at all for its scares. In what seems like a big trend for me this Halloween, the ending really won me over. Some of the best direction and visuals are from the last five minutes. Leaves a lasting impression!