Great white-knuckle nail-biter. Unlike the recent crop of horror films, Ils eschews the gore and simply ratchets up anxiety — with excellent steady editing, a shrewd use of shots and lighting, freaky sound. It opens cold, with a mother and irritating teen daughter crashing their car and finding themselves confronted by hidden antagonists. Then, switch gears to the real protagonists, we watch a French teacher and her husband in their country home find themselves subject to the same unexplained, merciless taunting and attack.
I gotta say, I loved it. At about 75 minutes, it’s deliberately paced but sleek and shorn of fat. Freaked me out something wonderful…
And I think the two directors are people to watch. Opening credits roll over a montage of the teacher’s car driving home. All of the shots are from above, composed with precision to follow the red vehicle along a straight line of highway, diagonally ‘up’ the shot through a neighborhood, around a curve. It’s a beautiful scene, disconnected from the story, but the imagery–this small motion, along precise geometrical lines–is both beautiful and a sly nod to the narrative structure, the cold hard precision of this kind of horror film.