Number 4:
The first of two French films in my Top 5 is a blood thirsty, cannibal creature feature which had its outdoor Cannes screening cancelled this year due to the amount violence depicted on screen. Luckily, that didn’t happen at FrightFest and I sank into my cinema seat at 11am to watch his low budget affair.
La Meute aka The Pack follows Charlotte a young French woman who after getting harassed by a group of bikers decides to pick up a hitch-hiker called Max, they bond over some heavy metal music and decide to stop at a road side cafe. After Max goes missing in the rest room Charlotte investigates further and ends up being kidnapped by the cafe owner La Spack and thrown in a cage to become the newest member of her human farm.
This really is a great debut from writer/director Franck Richard, his grim tones run throughout the piece but there is always a hint of playfulness underneath. The comedic moments are a little bit strange and sometimes feel out of place but they do make you laugh and give you a sense of release between the more gruesome images on screen.
The Ex-Wrestler La Spack is the life and soul of this story and it is her constant presence and dread that keeps the movie ticking over at the fantastic pace that it does, so when we finally meet The Pack we are ready for anything Richard throws at us. The creatures themselves are noticeably influenced by the creations of Guillermo Del Toro; the creepy movements are topped off by a great job by the makeup and prosthetics team. The design, movement and sound from the monsters are enough to shiver down anyone’s spine.
The film paws at the threads of being a little torture porn at certain moments but quickly steps away from the sub genre when it gets a little too clogged in the familiar; the craft behind the storytelling is easily visible and you can see Richards flair behind the camera. The film also looks great, with the earthly dirt trodden aesthetic bleeding through the screen.
As near the end we get a rather fun siege segment where a group people and Charlotte armed to the teeth with shotguns have to fight off the bombardment of The Pack, I could have genuinely sat through another 20 minutes of this as the trapped group get more and more agitated and scared by the constant attack they are living through. Rounding off at 80 minutes I would argue that the film is a tad short and doesn’t give enough time to some of the potential great cinematic moments it could have had.
As we move nearer to the end and to the climax of the movie, there is a panning shot that particularly stayed with me, I will keep what it shows to myself to stay spoiler free but that in my opinion the best shot in the entire festival, the lighting along with the earthly red, browns and greens of the surroundings create a truly haunting image and I must give cinematographer Laurent Bares a special mention for orchestrating such a magnificent shot.
Overall, The Pack was a brilliant little original take on a story we have seen many times before, Richard shows a huge amount of potential behind the camera with my only negative comment being that I wanted more.
8/10
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