Since the Italian film industry's "genre" film makers have sadly pretty much disappeared from view since the early 1990's (with Dario Argento perhaps being the only exception to it),I started to become very intrigued,when recently reading that since the mid 2000's a gradually building New Wave of Horror films has been taking place in France.As I started to do more research into this new movement,I began to get very excited in taking a look at this new exciting era of Euro Horror movies.Checking on Amazon,I was thrilled to find a pretty recent French Horror film being sold at a very good price,which led me to deciding that I would at last take a look at the brand new Grand Guignol.The plot:Being dragged along by his pregnant girlfriend to finally pay a visit to her wealthy family,Nathan instantly starts to feel a strong sense of being viewed as "not worthy" when his girlfriends family try to act as if he does not exist whilst they discuss about a disturbing number of strange dead animals that have been turning up near the family-owned pesticides plant.Desperate to find out what is causing the deaths of the animals,the family start to gather up all of their guns so that they can investigate the near by woods.Just as the family are about to set off,Nathan's girlfriend tells them all that they should take Nathan along so that he can begin to "bond" with her family.Grudingly accepting her idea,the girls family and Nathan begin to head for the woods,where they will make a shocking discovery about what their pesticide plant has done to the now covered in darkness woods.View on the film:Looking at the simplistic,but well executed screenplay by Antoine Blossier (who also directed) and Erich Vogel one of the main things that I noticed about the films tense plot was that it seemed to be a wonderful Horror-spin take on SCi-Fi films such as Pitch Black and Predator,as the team of intelligent,highly trained hunters enter an unknown looking wilderness fully armed,only to discover that the things they are facing are far more cunning and worthless than they ever could have began to imagined.With the Sci-Fi riffs Blossier and Vogel also include tremendous small character moments that really help to make each one very individual,such as Nathan (played by a great intense and charming Gregoire Colin) always being shown as someone,who even when trying to survive an attack from a psychotic pig (!) is still determined to get out of this nightmare that he has found himself in and go back home, to show his girlfriend that he will be able to handle the new pressures that are about to arrive.Along with the screenplay,Antoine's blood-drenched brilliant directing also gives a thrilling balance between the Sci-Fi riffs, (a nice,horrific scene of the mutated pigs attacking the hunters in an overgrown fields being like a group of over fed Velociraptor's from Jurassic Park)and a strong claustrophobic feel,with the oddly elegant scenes of Nathan hiding under some freshly dead animal corpses in an attempt not to be "smelled out" being shot with only minimal lighting which really helps to give the terrific, strong feeling that Nathan is about to find himself in a coffin made of dead,mutated pigs.Final View on the film:A great Horror with Sci-Fi riffs that is also a tremendous intro to The New Wave of French Horror.

A man wanders into his yard to find some deer badly mutilated. Is this somehow related to the nearby chemical plant or a coincidence? I have to say I enjoyed this movie. While not the greatest, it still had plenty of action, rich characters, a unique story, and amazing special effects. Whoever designed those animals did such an impressive job. I also appreciate the use of not showing things rather than showing them on occasion -- the imagination can fill in blanks nicer than CGI can more often than not.The romantic interest in this film is Claire, plated by Bérénice Bejo. You may recall Bejo as Christiana from "A Knight's Tale" or more recently as Peppy Miller in "The Artist". Her role is, sadly, rather small... but it was nice to see some noteworthy talent in a movie that otherwise had no names to speak of that I (as an American unfamiliar with French cinema) could recognize.If you wanted to venture into the world of French horror, this is not a bad place to start (and it makes a nice double feature with "The Pack").

You made your bed, now lie in it. We mess with Nature at our own risk. Genetically modified fertilizers can cause some nasty problems, as we see in this first feature by French director Antoine Blossier.While the family heads to the woods to find what is out there, we are treated to tensions caused by one not born into the group. The rest act as if he is also prey and they try to tear him apart.While in the woods in the darkness, we see snouts and teeth and hear terrifying noises. Will any survive? Do you really care for any of them?Is there anything new here? Haven't we seen it all before (Prophecy, Razorback, Pig Hunt)? The actors were good, and kept our interest, but I wonder if it would have been worth it to wait for Eric Valette's The Prey. Serial killers are more exciting than razorbacks.

I expected a little more from this horror movie. I never miss a french one, never. This feature is actually half drama, half horror, with a subplot between the characters I did not expect in such a film. But this is not uninteresting at all, on the contrary. It gives something more to the movie, and the characters are more involved in the story than in a usual horror flick. This topic reminds me of course Russel Mulcahy's RAZORBACK and also John Frankenheimler's PROPHECY, where we see the dangerous "side effects" that some criminal chemical industries can make to the surrounding wild life and country side.Just one thing: there are some lengths and so so sequences you have seen a billion times before in other movies. I won't say it's boring but...HmmmThe ending is OK, very "french" and far from the so predictable American ones...