Frontier(s) (2007)

frontiers1sheet

It has its moments, but Frontier(s) tries to do too much with a non-sensical plot and teach too many lessons that it knocks out any interest you might have had. If it had stuck to a plain story with clear motives, even if they are familiar, been structured somewhat properly, and gave enough time to each aspect instead of jamming it all into a despicable mess, Frontier(s) would have been much better, at least half decent. It is another entry into the French extremist movement that is hit and miss. Martyrs and Inside being hits while Ils (Them) and Frontier(s) are misses (Ils not as far of a miss as Frontiers). Frontier(s) is an all night excursion with no horizon. Assembling parts from films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and draining political turmoil and sprinkling it throughout with no purpose. Frontier(s) doesn’t know how to translate conscious cinema, or create, nor convey enough scares and gore to encompass a genre.

061988H5

Riots and chaos ensue after a right-wing extremist is elected president of France. A group of teenagers who manage to steal a bag of money plan to escape the craziness by fleeing to Amsterdam. During a series of events, Yasmine’s brother Sami is shot. The group decides to split up. Alex, Yasmine, and Sami head to the hospital while Tom and Farid drive to the boarder. Tom and Farid decide to stop at a sleazy motel where they are offered a free room and sex. They call Alex to inform them of their location and to invite them to the inn. Soon after, they discover the inn is run by a family of Nazi cannibals trying to create a pure race.

frontieres3

Karina Testa, the female lead is passable, but her incessant shaking is so frustrating. It is so genuinely annoying that you’ll find yourself yelling at her idiotic choices and unsanctioned mannerisms. I don’t know if it was the director, the writers, or Testa on her own who gave the go ahead on her continuous seizures, but it was definitely misplaced and overused. The build up didn’t even warrant a severe state of shock. The woman in Martyrs, hell, even Inside’s two leads went through more and took it better than someone who, for the most part is untouched. Yeah, you got your hair cut unwillingly, been hit a couple of times, seen some people die, but one of the girls in Martyrs was literally skinned alive and took it better and she was still able to make sensible choices, so honestly…suck it up. I know they’re trying to evoke a sense of empathy, but in reality you don’t really care what happens to any of the leads which is ultimately why Frontier(s) fails.

Frontier(s): 5.5 out of 10. The only reason they get a passing grade is some clever kills and appeasing gore. However, If this is your saviour and is the only reason you’re above 500, it might be time to reevaluate your picture.

About Joseph@thecinemamonster

Aspiring writer who absolutely adores film and television. thecinemamonster.com

Posted on March 25, 2013, in Horror and tagged . Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.

  1. Victor De Leon

    Good review. I watched this once and that was enough for me.

  2. While I have not seen this film yet, my brother reviewed it for our site and was less than impressed. Plenty of gore but not much character development I believe was his synopsis.

    Say when you get a chance swing by our film blog and say hi.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 603 other followers

%d bloggers like this: