So apparently a lot of people hate this movie. Well I can proudly say I'm not one of them. I thought Vincent Cassel puts down a great performance. But then I like to watch movies with messed up characters. And Cassel did really great with his role. He was really believable as the village psychotic weirdo. And totally different of what he normally plays. The plot itself was not that bad at all. The whole demented atmosphere is maybe not for everybody to watch but I thought that the dialogues were a mixture of vulgarity and humor and they perfectly fit in this movie. In fact I enjoyed every single minute of the movie. It's maybe not the usual horror movie but then again is that a bad thing?

Co-producer Vincent Cassel gave his handsome star Vincent Cassel (son of the late international star Jean-Pierre) a chance to essay the colorful character role of the repulsive gardener Joseph. Watching him mugging about in a scruffy-haired, ugly-toothed make-up provides most of the fun that is to be had from this peculiar but largely disagreeable diabolical French horror flick; there is little I hate more than the sight of young people waving their arms around in that silly 'hip-hop' fashion and, unfortunately, there is a lot of that going on in the first half of the film…but I must say that watching Cassel's baffled reaction to it was very amusing! Anyhow, three youngsters (each of a distinct race and creed) get in trouble during a Christmas Eve on the town until a beautiful girl (Roxane Mesquida of 2001's FAT GIRL fame) they meet in a disco invites them to spend the night at her farm on the outskirts; there they meet Joseph, his equally unattractive and very pregnant wife, a mentally-challenged relative, the town slut and several of her lusty pretenders. While there is not much gore to be had during the 94-minute running-time, the film-makers decided to substitute that with some disgusting visuals instead: a free-for-all nude swim in the hot waters of a cave; Joseph licking his pregnant's wife tummy; the latter breaking water in the corridor at the climax; an all-important eye-gouging and, worst of all, a completely irrelevant flashback to one of the youngster's one-night stand with (again) an unattractive girl in a tent where her private regions are represented as a table replete with unappetizing food! The events depicted in the film could well be a nightmare being experienced by that same unlucky youngster after being beaten up at the discotheque…or the would-be Satanic rituals revolving around the birth of Cassel's child might really be happening – but, frankly, one never cares enough about any of the characters to spend much time afterwards on sorting it all out. For what it is worth, Cassel's real-life wife Monica Bellucci appears briefly as a female vampire in the black-and-white film-within-a-film being shown on TV at one point!

This film was a surprise to me. Surprising in that it had real energy and I liked the acting. Very believable cast and Cassel was once more superb. A real brute of a man. If you are expecting a horror film then you will be disappointed. It is in no way scary. There are a few moments that are unnerving which lend the film a certain edge. You never really know where its going and because of this I enjoyed it. There is no good guy bad guy narrative so it meanders but I did not mind this. It was shot nicely with a few 'doggy cam' touches which are always good if not overused. The ending was also a surprise. It skates along and before I knew it was finished. Packed with clichés but done with a twist. I will be looking out for what Chapiron does next.

For once all the usually exaggerated glowing reviews printed on the DVD jacket are right. This movie and the performance by Vincent Cassel are fantastic, demented, outrageous.A group of multicultural ghetto kids (a black guy, an Asian guy, a French goof with his dog, an Arab chick and a French girl) end up taking a trip to the countryside after the goof gets bottle smashed on his head in a club over the girl. As they arrive at the girl's home on the country, they run into the goatherd who lives there and guards the ranch: Joseph (played or rather embodied by Cassel), who is a little odd and not just physically. He seems to get rather "friendly" with goof.The father of the girl was a dollmaker (of course) so you have the obligatory room filled with dolls, doll parts, dismembered dolls, weird looking dolls, and some strange doll-making instruments one of which is this large corkscrew-shaped knife, which you just know will make an appearance later in the movie.In the village nearby they meet some of the villagers that look all like they have some genetic defect: a typhoid-looking kid who seems rather close to girl, and bunch of creeps on motorcycles, and the hot village slut, whom Joseph tries to hook up with goof.Later our gang goes bathing in a grotto. Not long after Joseph shows up and again gets uncomfortably close to goof, the rest of the village people show up as well and harass our friends. Slut goes after goof, who's not in the mood. So instead, slut gets rather touchy with his dog!- in defiance, in my opinion, of the censors.Back in the home, the guys, who all think of themselves as super machos and irresistible, while being rather ugly fellows, try to hook up with the girls. Problem: there's 2 girls for the 3 guys. Black guy, who has his girlfriend calling him on the phone all the time, tries to go for Arab chick- both are Muslims. While Asian guy and goof try to sort out who gets girl. Solution: they both get her and there's some threesome action.While all this is taking place, something is going in Joseph's room. His overweight wife is about to give birth at 12 midnight. This of course is not just an ordinary birth. Joseph wants to prepare a special doll for his future kid.Eventually, people start dying as Joseph goes completely nuts. But wait, could this all have been a dream/hallucination of goof who got beat in the head? This movie is the funniest horror movie I've seen in a long time. It's truly hilarious, it's politically incorrect, it's outrageous- not with lame punchlines, but with realistic characters and dialogue. The kids are horny dumbasses who tease each other and talk the big talk while being nobodies, they listen to some outrageous french/Muslim rap. But they are also truly funny in their naiveté and innocence despite pretending to be tough-guy casanovas.The dialogue is very natural for the age and social group, I imagine and I can only go by the subtitles which are good but sometimes missing. There are times when someone is saying an awful lot of stuff that doesn't make it to the subtitles. Some scenes can be pretty disgusting, there's a lot of animal business involved: a dog fight, goats being kicked and hit by car, vultures eating some rodent, and slut manually abusing the dog. I could have done without all that. But it's tolerable and the rest of the movie and Josheph's outrageous hilarious behavior make up for any shortcomings or scenes that may go to far.This movie is very original and unique. No American filmmakers would come up with something remotely as wild as this movie. The cinematography and camera work are pretty good, too. One of the finer entries in the French horror genre and this one is not your dry and predictable 'woman takes revenge on killer' type french gore movie. The story here is so different and surprising, it's a must see for fans of creepy movies.