Ils, which translates to "Them" is a French film directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud, staring Olivia Bonamy and Michaël Cohen.In Ils, the two main characters are pursued through their home and the surrounding area by a group of what turn out to be ten to fifteen year old children. These kids track down and kill Clementine and Lucas, seemingly as a diversion. The post-script atates that when the youngest child is asked why, he responded "They wouldn't play with us." The movie is billed as "based on a true story."
What struck me about the ending of Them is how the film depicts the children after the murders. They emerge from the woods to hop directly on the school bus. The monsterous creaking sound that has occumpanied their presence swells as they exit the woods, until one realizes it is a toy noisemaker. The children seem normal.
This movie embodies a fear that runs through a good percentage of horror, which is terror of the degenerating future. Any apoclaypse film posits a similar indightment: that if we do not change, do not work against what is seen as the moral decline of the present, these children will be our future. Though it is not obvious, this movie asserts a very clear, conservative moral. It presents an example, as many horror films have, of the amoral future. This movie is tight, suspenseful, and definitely worth watching.
B+
