Humains

Director: Jacques-Olivier Molon, Pierre-Olivier Thevenin (2009)

Starring: Lorant Deutsch, Sara Forestier, Dominique Pinon

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

A French backwoods horror with a twist*, Humains is a stunning exercise in fucking up one's own movie. It's a symphony in bathos. The first half is a servicable, if slightly dull backwoods horror type thing. Two families take a road trip through Switzerland (although I've been to Switzerland, and it's a lot prettier than Humains portrays it as being) and wind up in trouble when they drive their car off the side of a cliff. The usual backwoods type nonsense ensues until a big twist at the halfway point. Beware spoilers. Although I'd consider this more of a warning than a spoiler.

Dear Humains, it is hard to take you seriously as a horror movie when your antagonist is, essentially, a horny version of this:

Actually, that is quite scary.

That's right, our intrepid heroes are being hunted by a tribe of fucking cavemen. And not even semi-scary cavemen like The Hills Have Eyes mutants or the family from Offspring. The monsters in Humains are actual cavemen who wear furs, have big skulls and throw spears. In a couple of shots, gone is the movie's credibility, believability or good-ibility. I honestly can't think of a worse way Humains could have played out.

So the group discover that they're being hunted by The Flintstones. The men are knocked out and just... well, left there. The cavemen don't even bother trying to kill the men, because they're of no interest. They kidnap the party's women and keep them in their cave as sex slaves. There are no cavegirls, so the species' only hope of survival is through the medium of rape. It would be offensive, but it's just stupid. The action ramps up considerably for the final half hour or so, but it's impossible to take any of it seriously. By the time you're asked to sympathise with the rapist rubber-heads, you'll either have given up entirely or just let your brain go to sleep. That Humains scores 2/5 Screamy Scream Ladies is thanks entirely to the movie's decent first hour and some funny bursts of dialogue throughout. Otherwise, it's a complete failure. Yabba dabba don't bother.

*The twist being that Humains is actually a thoroughly shitty movie.