Review of Frontier(s) (2007) by Ellie D — 26 Mar 2012

A decent gore fest with a direct, full tilt and in your face delivery. The problem this reviewer had is simply that we don't really get to know any of the main protagonists in any depth, so a quickly prevailing feeling of 'do we care' develops midway through the second act.

The cast is very good in the micro roles that they are given but these crumbs are not enough to captivate in what is becoming a difficult genre to crack. If a little more care and attention was paid to cracking this problem as it was to cracking skulls and flesh, bones and tendons we would be possible piling on the praise that may have just turned this ugly, snarling beast of a film into a classic.

Karina Testa is fine in the lead role but none of the evil 'Von Geislers' family are allowed enough screen time for them to achieve anything but caricature status, even the promising plier wielding Von Geisler played briefly by jean Pierre Jorris is too short lived for maximum effect.

The film has a reasonably good social sub text but political allegory it is not. A decent attempt was made despite the relentless breakneck speed of the action. It is this pace that causes this film to feel rushed overall. Am I alone in thinking that if this film had an extra 15 minutes of character development we could be talking about a genre leader and not merely an incredibly blood soaked addition. It is not a short film by anyones standard and standing in at 108 minutes, I am sure some cutting room floor material included this character dev, was the editing responsible? only Director Xavier Gens could truly answer this, but if his intention was to deliver gore, sadism squealing pigs, undeveloped mutant children and an olympic swimming pool amount of blood then he most definitely succeeded.

If it was Gens intention to produce a genre defining movie as political metaphor then he has failed. There are indeed strong whiffs of TCM, Red State, Martyrs and even the risible Hostel (which this reviewer wishes was exactly 94 minutes shorter) The simplicity of these movies is part of the reason that they work, but we also have a little time with the characters before they meet their inevitable demise, unfortunately not afforded hereâ¦Big Shame!

That said Gens has still brought us an interesting, stylish and at times highly (un)watchable entry to the survival horror/torture porn sub sub genre.