The Counterfeiters (2007)

10/10.

INSIDE - I was trying to move around some towering piles of DVDs the other day when a copy of 'Inside' fell from atop one tottering mound and hit me on the head. Did I take it as a sign that I should really stop all this crazed disc buying, which devours space as well as cash (and time, if I go as far as watching all this stuff)? No, I took it to mean that I needed to sit down again with 'Inside', which I hadn't seen for years. The cosmos spoke, and I pressed play etc. Well, 'Inside', I'd forgotten how graphic it was. For some reason, I think of the mid-noughties as the time when horror got really gory again, although historically that's more than likely to be bollocks. But there certainly was quite a lot of nasty French stuff being released then, and 'Inside' was part of that very splattery wave. Most will probably be familiar with 'Inside', but for those in need of a recap it's basically about a pregnant photographer, about to give birth (on Xmas eve), who finds herself stalked and eventually terrorised by a shadowy figure. Some quite intense carnage happens along the way. It's great, better than I remembered it, actually... Beatrice Dalle in particular is a really strong, intimidating presence, and, besides the closed location and the oppressive visual style, is at the root of 'Inside's claustrophobic atmosphere. Some of the images towards the end are amazing, including Dalle, her face hideously mangled and burned, cradling a foetus in the dark. The film drew a lot of comparisons to Fulci era Italian stuff, and these kind of visuals rather than necessarily the gore make me think of that brand of crepuscular junk-surrealism. Very much recommended if you haven't seen it already, definitely a high point of last decade's horror cinema.

I really tried to like "Inside" but the scenes with the police and the Arab bloke spoilt the whole thing for me. I just couldn't figure out the reason for them other than making some vague political point totally outside of the context of the rest of the film. Perhaps that was the point.

I agree about Inside being one of the strongest of the 'New French Extremity' films, along with another superb home invasion film, Them (Ils, 2006) and Martyrs (2008). The only part I didn't particularly like were the slightly unconvincing CGI inserts of the foetus.

Superbly acted drama based on a less well known aspect of the Holocaust, which raises some very interesting moral questions, such as how far we as individuals will go to survive in such extreme situations.

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WEIRD SCIENCE (1985)

After watching Frankenstein on the tv,two friends who are hopeless with the girls and can only dream about what it must be like to have a girlfriend, decide to make a woman on their computer....
I had not seen this film in years so it was good to revisit. Lots of fun to be had here as Lisa (Kelly Le Brock) sets out to get the boys on the right track by having a house party that is gate crashed by refugees from The Hills Have Eyes and Mad Max ! Chet (Bill Paxton) is excellent as the big brother bully.

"It's purely sexual" :nod:

I tend to let stuff like that wash over me, and really only tuned into 'Inside' on a visceral / atmospheric / waking dream type level. That said, it was obvious that a broad point was being made about social unrest vs bourgeois suburbia. The makers of 'Inside' chose to keep this in the background and use it more as a source of vague threat, which is probably for the best, because a lot of the other aspects of the film do come across as being a bit contrived (ie setting up the various callers at the house to ensure a stock of 'victims').

Agree on the CGI in 'Inside' for sure, although it was easy to let it slide. I really liked most of those French nouveau splatter films, but 'Martyrs' was for me the strongest of them. And 'Them' / 'Ils' was great too, and did what it did without recourse to loads of gore and extremity. I have a soft spot for 'Frontiers' and 'Haute Tension', which sometimes seem a little disregarded these days.

Have you seen the French film Brocéliande ?

It's not up to the same standard as the others mentioned here, but it's mix of splatter, beasts and Celtic lore appeal to me.

Unfortunately the US dvd is long since deleted but i'd recommend a watch if it pops up on Netflix etc.

Watched a load of stuff (as ever) but a particular highlight was Coherence which I watched last night. A low-budget sci-fi thriller/relationship drama that's both smart and engrossing and demands immediate re-watching due to the twistiness of the narrative. Highly recommended