Frontier(s)

The turbulent French sociopolitical context at the dawn of the new millennium (the success of Marine Le Pen’s National Front in 2002, the 2005 riots in the French banlieues, etc.) lead novice director Xavier Gens to envision a horror film mirroring the social malaise of a historical period in which populism, mounting rage, and desperation among its citizens reach ever more disturbing levels, and where civil unrest has become the order of the day.

And so we get “Frontier(s)”, a fierce, pessimistic work that openly pays homage to Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) and, according to the director, Pasolini’s “Salò” (1975) as well. Unfortunately, the lofty ambitions of Xavier Gens’s script fail to fully translate to film. The tumultuous scenes of citizens rioting in the opening sequence, for example, can’t conceal a note of falseness, and the progressive descent into hyperbole reveals a taste for excess simply for its own sake.

Reasonably effective on a pure entertainment level, the film is commonly lumped into the torture porn sub-genre along with other French productions similarly soaked in frenetic violence (Alexandre Aja’s “High Tension“, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s “Inside“, Pascal Laugier’s “Martyrs“). Although this film does legitimately fit that category, it’s definitely the weakest member of the group, both from the point of view of its content (nothing original here) as well as its overall look (its music-video style with numerous slick, frenetically edited scenes is beyond annoying).

The cast turn in good performances.