2023, Thomas Cailley (Les combattants) -- download
Small genre flicks are probably one of my schticks. I enjoy seeing what a movie can do when it is freed from the need to be a Hollywood production. Don't get me wrong; many small production genre movies want nothing more than to be recognized and swept into the big glitzy world of the purple suits, but the ones I more enjoy are about their creator's vision, intent and focus. Now, while the French movie industry is of an entire different tone than America's (and Canada's) Hollywood, its nice that this movie was allowed to breathe.
For an unknown reason, this world is having an evolution -- no not, a revolution -- people are mutating into animals. It is not concerned with the why's or how's, just that it is happening. François (Romain Duris, En attendant Bojangles) and Émile (Paul Kircher, Le lycéen) are moving from the city to a more rural area near a facility built to house the mutating. François's wife, Émile's mother, is in the later stages, and the two of them are held by loyalty and fear, as Émile still bears the scars from an attack while she was changing. Émile settles into a new school while François, a chef by trade, takes a catch-all job at a small resto. He is not afraid to humble himself to keep his family close. Unfortunately, the transport bringing many of the mutants to the newish facility crashes and many escape into the nearby forest. François becomes obsessed with finding his wife amidst the woods.
Meanwhile Émile begins to show signs, signs which he hides, hides from his father, and hides from the townsfolk & classmates who are clearly xenophobic to these strange creatures upsetting their lives. And strange they are. They take on all animal life forms: wolf, bear, insect, octopus, bird, etc. They are not turning like lycanthropes, but becoming more a merging of the animal form, humanoid but with distinct features, whether practical or not. The woods now teem with ... new & different life, but they are all in hiding, as locals and the called-in army try to deal with them -- often violently. Émile, while dealing with his own shame & fear, meets and befriends Fix, an escapee becoming a bird(man). François is just desperately trying to retain his family, even when it becomes fruitless.
There are few broad strokes in this movie. It doesn't try to be grand in what it is saying, it doesn't feel a need to be much more than a story of a father & son dealing with an incredible difficult situation. But as a genre movie, it loves its creatures -- they are lovingly, and oft horrifyingly depicted. Again, there are no explanations, and a part of my genre fiction fan brain wants some idea of the world building, the why's, but instead, we just have a tale of emotional impacts to a very not normal situation.
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