Sunday, May 4, 2008
Home invasion makes for a great scary-movie premise. I mean, horror movies expect us to get scared by zombies, dream demons and Draculas, and those assholes don't even exist. Home invasion could actually happen to you. You're minding your own business, maybe watching TV, late one night when BAM a bunch of weirdos in hoodies break into your place and murder you. There's something so simple but direct and realistic about the premise that cuts through all the contrived story elements of most other horror movies.
Them makes the right call by being short, fast-paced and to-the-point. We get a brief introduction, then the shit hits the fan and the movie never pauses for a breath. Too much story or set-up would ruin the headlong energy. It's no masterpiece of terror, but it builds a respectable amount of tension and excitement. I'm fond of it's simple but effective style and aspirations. It's another sign that we are in a renaissance of good horror films.
The ending is a disappointment though. I think the filmmakers wanted to put on a little button on the end instead of just going for the logical, abrupt ending. Maybe button is a bad metaphor, because this button is supposed to shock and disturb you, which isn't typically the job of a button. What I mean is there is a revelation at the end, not exactly a twist, that I think is supposed to make you go "woah!" and feel depressed and maybe feel like the movie is less light-weight and inconsequential. (It's not those things; I would call it lean and direct). Only, it's kind of an anti-climactic revelation. I like it, but they could have just revealed it halfway into the movie as a cool detail instead of trying to make it feel like some major, mind-blowing twist. Or if they had to do it at the end, they could have handled it better.
OK, spoilers. It turns out in the end that the home invaders are all little kids, like 10-15 years old. At the end, after killing off the leads, we see them walk calmly off, and get on a bus. There's a good idea here, but it's not well executed. The cool idea is "holy shit, those were just a bunch of kids, and they killed those people just for fun." That could make for a disturbing final scene. But even after the big reveal, the kids aren't really treated as kids, but still like faceless monsters who hide in the dark. Even in the last shot they look all spooky and mysterious, and lacking in personality. A much more disturbing variation would have been to have one of the kids go home and hug their mother and act like a good child, or maybe to have the kids all engage in a game or do some other inherently adolescent activity. Really emphasize that they are children, instead of just mention it and then not do anything with it.
Wow, I spent a lot of time bitching about the ending, but I think that's only because I liked the rest of the movie so much. This is an effective piece of sustained suspense, very well made. Oh and it's French, I didn't mention that before but there you go.
And later this month we have a new home invasion movie, The Strangers, which looks similar to Them and also looks fucking awesome. I can't wait.
4 comments:
dang yo. i really wish i'd been awake enough to stick around for this. but i was trying to prevent myself from dying driving home later. and now i know the ending cause i couldn't stop reading your post, even though you warned of spoilers. oh well.
ok, now having seen it, here's my take:
you built it up so well that i was a little disappointed...i mean, there's some set-up, and then it's basically an hour of "there's someone in the house! they're trying to to bad things to us, possibly kill us! i'm running from them! oh no, i encountered them! ok, i fended them off for a little while...now they're chasing me somewhere new!"
it was good at building tension, etc etc, but it's like...if the whole movie is LOOK IT'S TENSE BECAUSE I'M BEING PURSUED, then...it's a little less tense. i started to get really into it when that one little kid seemed to help them escape, then he turns on lucas and basically executes his death, then acts all innocent again with clem, like he's going to help her...and you see the struggle in her head whether to trust or not. it was a flash of complexity and character development that i appreciated.
i disagree with your take on the ending. i don't think they looked all dark and mysterious getting on the bus...i think showing them skipping out of the woods towards the bus made them look light-hearted and innocent. i do agree that they could have done without the little thing at the end that goes, "the youngest among them said, 'THEY wouldn't play with us!'" that was a little hokey and over the top. but i liked the ending overall, and i suppose it could've benefited from a little more stressing of the weird double-lives of the kids. but i think it worked for the most part.
Interesting that you pretty much have the opposite opinion as me. I was kinda excited when I saw "Them" because of it's no-frills approach to horror.
I liked that it just took a simple premise and ran with it. People breaking into your house is scary. I didn't think it needed a more complicated plot, or some sort of twist or anything. Complicating the story more wouldn't make it any scarier. Hell, I thought the "twist" at the end was a little lame and could have been eliminated.
I dunno, maybe this just makes the movie a technical exercise and little else. There's not really any depper themes or meaning or "art" in that sense. But I didn't really think any were needed. It's just a scary movie, plain and simple.
So I'm guessing you objected to one of two things:
1) The lack of plot made the movie feel inconsequential or maybe in some way like less of a "movie" than it should be.
or
2) The simplicity of the story seemed repetitive and monotonous to you.
Am I right on either count?
the second one- the repetetive thing. i have no problem with a movie being uncomplicated, or a technical exercise in achieving a certain effect. it doesn't have to have a deep "meaning" or reason for existing beyond that, if that's what it's going for. but yeah...i did find myself spacing out a little at parts because it was the same thing for the whole movie, even though it did do that same thing very well.
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