THE FRONTIERS

Directed by: Xavier Gens

Starring by: Karina Testa, Samuel Le Bihan, Estelle Lefebure, David Saracino, Chems Dahmani

Pacific Film

Again, French horror movies caught my attention though I had watched Sinister 2 on Cinema, but I’m still wondering of movie from there and can’t resist the urge to write another review of it. So this week I put this movie, which I had selected, and put Sinister’s review next week. For you who already watched Martyr, you might realized that French Director seemed crazy by Texas Chainsaw or Saw so they want to made Slasher movie in a French-style. And the same motivation occurs in this movie...

A riot happened in Paris when some President election wins the right wing extremist candidate, and there’s a small group of young fellow who made robbery, stealing cash, and chase by the police who want to escape from that country. The group is dividing into two small groups when one of their member where shoot by the police and wounded. Tom and Farid in the first group, runs as a pioneer for them to the border, while Yasmin and  Alex in the second, took Sami – Yasmin’s brother – who’s being shoot to the hospital.

Tom and Farid arrived to some motel and met two girls, Gilberta and Klaudia, who seduce the two of the men, not very long after they came. Alex and Yasmine flee from the hospital after Sami’s death, phoning their friends for directions to the inn. Tom and Farid gave them a direction but soon after that they’re attacked brutally by Gilberte, Klaudia, and their brother, Goetz. When Tom and Farid tried to escape, Goetz runs their car off a cliff. The two injured men wander into a mine shaft, where Tom is quickly recaptured. Meanwhile, Yasmin and Alex who arrived on that motel are captured by Von Geisler’s family

Everything in this movie stunned me; the loose finger of Tom when he got shot, an axe that split Tom’s forehead, Farid who got boiled alive, the cutting of Alex’s back leg, and several other things to mutilate the victims which finally being ate by the monstrous family. But I don’t know, I think there’s many losing grip from this one comparing with Martyrs, such as I don’t think Tom got the chance to survive from the axe but surprisingly he still alive when Alex found him hanging in the barn with his feet hooked. Tom also could warn Alex, with hoarseness though, and took Eva’s part to cut his throat to finish the man. I don’t know, maybe the axe wouldn’t do enough.

Another funny things are, when Farid are being chased by Hans and Karl. He managed to hit Karl with a sledgehammer and knocked him down hard, but in the next scene when Karl was sitting on the dinner table with the family there’s no mark or bruises on his face. What a superman he was. I also didn’t understand the purpose of Von Geisler to married her son, Goetz, with Yasmin. If he want to prevent the pure blood of his Nazi’s Caucasian Race thing, it will be more appropriate if they didn’t keep the baby in Yasmin’s body, but on the contrary they looked happy with the presence of her unborn baby  

Unfortunately, the Slasher act in every scene lost its interest for me because I didn’t felt the climax as I’ve seen in Martyrs. The skin peeling was something beyond my imagination but I could guess at the end of the story, it probably the girl against the whole family who want to make her part of them.  Eventually, I was right on my prediction, so the Frontiers used the-heroine-who-managed-to-defeat-enemies tricks, similar as Mila Jovovich did in Resident Evil, only in more realistic way.

Overall, I think this movie is something to watch over with. The Frontiers will certainly please horror fans with more extreme, violent horrors we’ve been seeing from Europe taste. They presented us with many harsh and nasty pictures that will blow your mind...no wonder it banned in several countries such Thailand and Indonesia.