A grisly, Gallic horror overcome with bloodlust. By JACOB POWELL.

NOT A FILM for the faint-of-stomach, Xavier Gens’ (Hitman) recent addition to the growing Gallic-Horror genre, Frontier(s), throws personal atrocities at the viewer in fast and furious succession creating, after the obligatory 20-minute plot setup, an almost non-stop bloodbath of genre clichés. Presenting spectacle after grisly spectacle, Gens unashamedly ticks more genre boxes than other films would venture to do in twice the runtime. It is as if the director sat in a room with a few guys one night throwing ideas around for a horror film and then didn’t edit out a single one!

Frontier(s) kicks off with a monologue from its young pregnant protagonist, Yasmine (Karina Testa), waxing depressive about how the maxim: “Men are born free with equal rights” is a load of shit, and that she plans to spare her unborn child the agony of living in the world she inhabits. Set against the backdrop of the violence and riot-fraught election of an extreme right wing political party – fears almost realised in recent day France – the film’s principal foursome, under the cover of the riots, commit a bank robbery hoping to make good their escape across the French-Luxembourgian border. Unfortunately, one of their accomplices gets shot in the process and the team splits up with arrogant ‘player’ Tom (David Saracino) and the less aggressive Farid (Chems Dahmani) leaving Paris with a 2-3 hour head start on their slightly psychotic group leader Alex (Aurélien Wiik) and feisty Yasmine (his ex-girlfriend) who are following their trail in another car. Going on evening Tom and Farid pull into an isolated rural hotel, and you just know there will be some freaky country inbreeds running this shit-hole in the middle of nowhere.

Greeted in a creepy come-hither manner by sisters Gilberte (Estelle Lefébure) and Klaudia (Amélie Daure) the boys book a room and engage in some verbal foreplay. Cut to a little girl-on-girl to get the boys warmed up, followed by some hard hitting bedroom action, and an incredibly odd family dinner then suddenly the rug is pulled out from under our streetwise Parisians. They find out they’re not in Kansas anymore, and that their tough guy talk won’t impress this overly large family of odd Gallic yokels. Tom and Farid soon lose the ensuing car chase and also the opportunity to let their soon to be hell-bound friends in on the horrific state local of affairs. Turning up not long after Alex and Yasmine are taken to a “hostel”, not to meet up with their wayward friends as they believe, but instead to meet with the rest of this Gallic Addams Family, including: obese, slovenly Hans who is in charge of the family ‘butchery’; his petite and mentally absent wife Eva (Maud Forget); their racial-purity obsessed, Luger toting father Le Von Geisler (82-year-old Jean-Pierre Jorris!?); and the only son who has ever made him proud (apparently) Karl (Patrick Ligardes).

You can guess what follows for the next hour or so: just think of every violently sadistic film you can and pull out all the major pieces of action found therein. Writer/director Gens serves up a feast of morsels care of many modern horror greats: from the use of numerous crude weapons (pickaxe, sledge hammer, meat hooks, electric table saw – though not a chainsaw in sight) and litres of fake blood akin to Peter Jackson’s splattergore classic Braindead; to the blood soaked heroine pushed-over-the-edge as in Neil Marshall’s The Descent (via Stephen King’s Carrie); to the inbred family terror circus of Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses; to the direct dialogue hat tip, i.e. Eli Roth’s Hostel. Gens also borrows from more artful productions, such as his character Hans resembling Jeunet & Caro’s butcher Clapet from their early 90s black comedy Delicatessen, and people sitting down to feast on human flesh as in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. In fact, Frontier(s) references genre relatives at a rate comparable only to an Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg production – except without anywhere near the same level of warmth and respect that gushes from these two. Instead you’re left feeling like the director is just trying to stuff in as much ‘good material’ as possible; and I’m not sure why. We end up with an overloaded pastiche of iconic images making for a confused film that produces more bemused laughs than moments of terror – and without seeming to realise that it is doing so; any intended political allegory, unfortunately, left at the door.

On the plus side, Gens’ film packs enough visceral punch to keep up a breakneck pace and Karina Testa admirably carries off the role of psychologically steamrolled protagonist, Yasmine, fighting for her life to the very last. It is to his credit that the director keeps much of the latter action focused around her character as Testa comfortably shoulder’s the dramatic responsibility for the film. I would say that Frontier(s) contains enough interest and merit to appeal to hardcore genre fans or proselytes alike – even if it is unlikely to remain an enduring favourite in years to come.