Review of Frontier(s) (2007) by Sebastian R — 12 Jul 2008

Xavier Gans' Frontiere(s) is a difficult film to watch for many reasons and (literally) throws up questions such as: how many more films set in rural isolation about redneck families can there be? How many more times can you watch/endure fictional torture porn without nodding off to sleep? And, are there really any original ideas left in horror cinema to explore? Frontiere(s) is yet another spin on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) by way of Eli Roth's Hostel (2005).

It's a clumsy, crass, miserable film shot like an MTV music video/commercial with no characters to empathise with and gore scenes that are blatantly copied from those other aforementioned (better) films.

Much of the running time is spent witnessing band saws rending flesh, heads exploding, ankle tendons being slit open and a pregnant woman being beaten to a pulp and continually humiliated. The movie's biggest mistake is assuming that showing more will shock you more and this simply isn't the case; you should have characters with shade and history and scenes that are imbued with suspense before the gruesome pay offs, well.

. er.... pay off- and these are all features sadly lacking in Frontiere(s). Set in a near future Paris, the film details the last days of a group of petty robbers who flee the city in the midst of riots which-in a non to subtle finger point at Le Pen- are sparked off by the election of a right wing president.

They head out into the French wilderness and stumble across a hotel set next to a long abandoned mine that is run by a couple of whisky guzzling floozies and a hulking skinhead. It's not long before the situation becomes hostile between the two parties and the rest of the redneck family materialise only to reveal that they are in fact cannibalistic Nazis intent on impregnating the female member of the escapee gang so that they can create a mini master race of their own.

From one macro right wing regime to another micro fascist regime then..very clever. Part of the problem with Frontiere(s) is that, despite all it's pandering to bludgeoning, excruciatingly brutal violence, abject cruelty and faecal drenched squalor, everything is incredibly safe and theatrical looking, a matter which, ironically, is further hampered by an over used and lazy verite filming style that will have most seasoned movie goers groaning into their buckets of vomit.

It certainly lacks the edgy feel and immediacy of the films it apes such as Last House of the Left and Hills Have Eyes. Most disappointingly, the interesting satirical elements so heavily publicised in the run up to the films release turn out to be disingenuous throw away stabs at George Romero's polished approach to dismantling the twatty republicans and are all but thrown away within the first few minutes of the films mercifully scant running time.

Only in the final sequence does Gans' create any sense of thematic prowess with the final(naturally for a slasher flick) female survivor escaping from one ghastly predicament only to then run head long into another metaphorical furnace in the shape of the right wing city cops who were pursuing her in the first place.

In conclusion Frontiere(s) leaves you with one over riding question and, like all the others it raises, it's a rhetorical one at that: Why did you bother?