Christmas is a time to spend with the family, sitting round having dinner or on long car journey’s off to visit other family members. This film is a cautionary tale for you all about: car journeys, taking short-cuts and generally spending any time with members of one’s family as these activities can and will drive you insane.
This starts out as a very ominous and scary film, to its credit. There is an air of impending doom and dread but you do not know why, unfortunately this soon changes and you are introduced to a very strange world where you cannot quite understand what is going on.
A family are on a car trip to have Christmas dinner at the gran’s house. The father decides to take a short cut and things take a turn for the stranger side of life when they appear to find themselves in an area that is not on any map, with strange apparitions appearing and disappearing, where all the clocks are stuck at the same time. It is as this place doesn’t exist, but yet it must, they are there. How can this be explained? Hmmm? C’est tres strange, non?
Oui, oui, it is very strange as the two French directors of this film keep shoving down our throats. It starts off as a very original film as you cannot name the terror that is stalking the actors. It soon becomes a strange, slightly clichéd horror film but still manages to keep you guessing and vaguely interested. However, this then descends into a rambling, horrible, wannabe intellectual, ‘ooohhhh, isn’t that weird, she thinks it’s all a dream but in her hand is the key she dreamt off’ type films. Trying too hard to creep you out and failing on the creep, but manages to wanna get you out of the cinema a lot quicker.
It is possible to see how this would have been far more successful if made by a small independent director and film company, with the air of foreboding actually representing the horror of family get-togethers and a confined car journey magnifying the annoyances of each member of the family.
OVERALL SUMMARY
What starts out as a very promising, ominous and scary film is severely let down by the weakest of endings and there is no way it is only 85 minutes long.
