User Reviews

I suppose it's a bid to assure the teen audience that horror is 'cool', but there seems to be an unwritten rule that films of this genre often have to feature a soundtrack made up of 'college rock' music. This faux-aggressive accompaniment is one of the first things we hear in 'The Pack', but thankfully it is just to let us know the sole heroine Charlotte (Emilie Dequenne) is dark and dangerous. The young man she gets to know Max (Benjamin Biolay) bears an uncanny resemblance to Gollum actor Andy Serkis.

Before too long, Charlotte has been customarily tortured, fed and bled and offered up as a sacrifice to some horrifying, sightless, hairless creatures in boiler-suits, that dwell underground. "I think she'll hold out," muses Le Spack (Yolande Moreau), the mother of the Texas Chainsaw-style family responsible for events.

And that's what the films turns out to be, ultimately. A kind of French mash-up of 'Chainsaw Massacre'/'Wrong Turn' (there's even some hillbilly banjo music towards the end). The nature of the sightless creatures is enigmatic (miners who 'dug too far' underground), and the group of comedy bikers who attempt to save the day are simply … odd.

Ultimately, 'The Pack' is a little disappointing after an intriguing start. It has an illogical ending and features characters with very inconsistent motives. It is, nevertheless, stunning to look at; the locations are very atmospherically shot and drive home a constant sense of grim, cold isolation.

well, a french one... starts as a road-movie, than being a bloody slasher until a sort of comedy-bloody-fairytale...the actors doing a good job, the plot is twisted...maybe the movie wants to much. when you like horror you be pleased, specially when you like the European style of cinema. has some funny lines in it. but sometimes you be like "o- kay, didn't thought it'll work out like that". but once you feel the vibe of one of the three genres i mentioned earlier and all of a sudden the movies changes, you feel kind of irritated. it's like watching a picture, thinking it's nice - the movies well photographed - but you do yourself a favor if you not asking yourself: whats that all about????

In some godforsaken rural part of France, a young woman, Charlotte Massot (Émilie Dequenne; playing one of those edgy, posturing types whose clothes, attitude, and taste in music defines her personality) driving with no specific destination, decides to pick up a solemn, relatively introverted hitchhiker, Max (Benjamin Biolay), telling him she plans to stop when her cds run out, just following the direction of the sun. Stopping off at a cruddy diner, the two sit down for a cigarette smoke and drink, getting into an altercation with repulsive, purposely vulgar bikers, the slovenly shot-gun packing proprietor of the grungy joint (Yolande Moreau, as La Spack) breaking it up. When Max hits the john, not returning, Charlotte is curious of his disappearance, not finding him in the bathroom, bewildered at where he possibly vanished to. After a conversation with a rather creepy retired law enforcer of the area (who wears a shirt that reads "I F*ck on the First Date"), Charlotte (giving this guy her name and phone number) will return to La Spack's establishment later into the night, her goal to see what lies behind a peculiar door in the restroom where Max went in and never came out. La Spack is waiting for her, using a paddle (it is basically a piece of wood with a handle) to knock her unconscious. From there is a surreal nightmare where creatures from deep within the earth, with a voracious appetite for blood and flesh, may be treated to Charlotte, and some poor Asian kid in a cowboy hat, murmuring repeatedly, "John Wayne, John Wayne, John Wayne…", rocking up and down nervously, both held captive in La Speck's basement, in cages, preparing them as human food because why should the vampires (with no eyes or nose) be refused din-din—don't they deserve to survive just as much as Charlotte? That's pretty much it, in a nutshell. You'll remember the grotesque facial features of the monsters (they walk in the lumbering fashion of Romero Zombies, with two husk-like lower teeth that protrude as they gargle, ready for their blood feast), the slobby La Spack and her macabre activities favorably doting on the monsters at the misfortune of victims who become trusting of her rather unassuming son (he doesn't look threatening, and Charlotte becomes so at ease with him, she lets Max drive while she sleeps!), the farm and its surroundings (reeking of a depression era poverty, out in the middle of nowhere, fields and lumpy empty valleys surrounding it), and the graphic violence (a monster's hand literally rips through a victim's chest, searching for the lock handle to the door holding the creatures out; a shot gun hole open in a victim's upper torso La Spack sees through; a victim hanging upside down, missing a leg; a hand is blown right off the arm; the aforementioned paddle has a large nail at the end that sticks into a victim's forehead, the hole later used to pour blood into a bucket) will produce some moments of minor excitement, but the movie has one of those eye-rolling endings that can't be taken seriously, not to mention, Charlotte is really, really a stupid character (it takes her to get to the *good stuff* but it is really hard for me to sympathize with someone who gets herself into such detrimental situations which could lead to her own undoing, when, in fact, she could escape without too much harm) who makes some mind-numbingly, head-scratching decisions that result in her own personal misery. The movie's over pretty quickly, though, but the opening is slow-going before the plot gets weird and grisly.

"I told you not to pick up hitchhikers" says the buffoonish old cop to the damsel-in-distress, as he frees her from her cage. So that must be the movie's message: don't give rides to hitchhikers because they might be merely bait to get you to stop over in a seedy backwoods diner, where a fat woman will kidnap you, and then prepare you as food for her brood of dead/undead bloodthirsty demons-from-beneath-the-surface sons. I think it's a lesson we can all agree on is both useful and intelligent.

I, for one, have often considered picking up hitchhikers, but then changed my mind at the last moment, fearing that the hitchhiker might be one of those numerous cannibals (or at the very least friends-of-cannibals) so I always thought "nah, not worth the risk; if they stick me in a cage and try to force-feed me with weird nutrients through a tube as I sit shackled in a torture-chair, how do I know that I won't be annoyed, or even eaten?" This is probably why I am still alive and not being digested in the guts of a French-movie hell-demon-zombie.

So how did the events in this highly original flick even come about? It all started when the family from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" downloaded the "Motel Hell" DVD one day. They became instant fans of this "classic". This life-changing cinematic experience lead them to the decision to take an extensive French-language course. A year later they moved to rural France, where the male clan members got jobs at the local mine. A mine accident occurred and the fine young cannibal males all died. Then – as is the case with all buried/killed miners - they rose from the dead, then lost their eyesight, started looking like the creature from "Pan's Labyrinth", and then cried out in one voice, loudly: "Mom, we're moles now, and we want be to fed like moles… sort of. Human Tofu, pleeeeease!" All clear?

It's just another brainless, depraved, sadistic-for-the-sake-of-it French flick, without an ounce of logic or purpose. The only thing that differentiates LM from similar turds, such as "Martyrs" and "L'interieur", is that this particular celluloid disaster has elements of fantasy in it, whereas most other Nouveau Extremisme de la France turdeuax don't.

The movie completely lost me in what I consider a crucial scene – and by "crucial" I mean crucially MORONIC scene: when the girl and the hitchhiker approach his farm early on, they see a young woman wrapped in cellophane, running frantically and bumping into furniture, eventually knocking herself unconscious. This amazingly odd event, which would have had anyone suddenly very wary of entering the diner, left our damsel COMPLETELY cold. She just didn't care. Are we to assume that in rural France it is customary to welcome diner guests by hiring women to run around, wrapped in cellophane, while they bump into things randomly? Judging from the damsel's reaction – yes.

This scene was crucial because it took me out of the movie, i.e. from that point onwards I simply couldn't take these absurd characters seriously, hence I stopped taking the movie seriously, hence I didn't care what happens. When a few minutes later three absurd/fictional bikers started pounding the cellophane-wrapped girl in the face viciously, that merely confirmed that I was watching an extremely dumb movie. A little later, guess what happens? Well, what MUST happen in every perverse French movie: a man has to be raped. (The cinematic tradition of male-on-male rape is a one that French film-makers carefully nurture.) Fortunately for her son, Momma Texas Chainsaw arrives with a shotgun at the last moment, points it at the very unrealistic bikers, thereby sparing her offspring a very painful introduction into the bizarre world of French-movie sodomy.

It's not entirely clear why Momma Texas Chainsaw's mole-sons had decided not to eat the damsel when she was on their menu that one evening. Perhaps they preferred Tofu that day? (Their Oriental victim had the word "Tofu" branded on his forehead. I did say the movie was fairly retarded.) Nor is it at all clear why Momma Texas Chainsaw is immune to bullets; she got shot, point blank, and yet she stood up later without even a bullet mark or any trace of blood staining her beautiful peasant-slasher attire. Later on, we have more confusion when the three very fictional bikers reappear, and then barely react to having a freshly severed head thrown at them through a window. Apparently, rural French bikers get that all the time – body parts being hurled at them. It doesn't faze them.

In fact, these bikers later UNITE with the damsel and Momma Texas Chainsaw's only non-mole son, against her and her mole brood. And no, it's not a tongue-in-cheek movie. IT'S. SIMPLY. STUPID.

Nor is it clear why the old cop behaves in such a bizarre way. (Nor why he is so daft as to lean on the cage where the obviously undead Momma Texas Chainsaw resided.) Must everyone be insane in a French horror film? Even the good guys? Sure, why not. This is a very French movie, don't forget.

LM can't even stick to its own rules. First the mole-zombies move very slowly, but later on they're suddenly Olympics sprint champions. Even their numbers shift. At first there are four, but later a dozen of them – and we know that Momma Texas Chainsaw fed only a handful.

At the end of these 80 minutes of sheer twaddle, the damsel eventually loses her battle against evil, and ends up hanging from a rope, upside-down, while her 38th liter of blood drips down her face (she's got a leg missing, see). In LM, it's not just the mole-zombies that defy the laws of physics, biology, and even the most basic logic.

I like European cinema, i really do. And the producers of french horror/thriller films tend to create excellent atmosphere, effects & acting. This movie has all these i mentioned but, unfortunately nothing more. First 1/3 was interesting and wanted to see more. But as the film progressed i was getting bored, and at the end i couldn't care less about anything and anyone on this film. It lacked scenario and tried so hard to shine from the bunch of its kind, that failed miserably.

pros: as previously written effects, acting, atmosphere. cons: really bad "wannabe good" script, no character development, classic till "bored to death" ending.

french (horror) cinema has made a few good films the past years, somehow the Eurostyle filming, the landscape and the violence proved to be a rather stylish mix.

However with a couple of gems the road is clear for sub par stuff floating to the surface, and this movie is one of the latter.

the setup is cliché, girl picks up hitchhiker, hitchhiker disappears , girl investigates and finds more then she bargained for. First the good stuff:

• Scenery.. yeah take a look at that great gloomy french countryside and you would probably turn into a killer too, or commit suicide, in other words, scenery and photography is great. - the ghouls..or monsters, original make up work, decent back story -the main villain..great acting work

and the bad stuff

• plot.. come on guys, you got enough in the mix to make this worthwhile, good monsters, even a siege.. but it doesn't connect with each other and the loose elements remain just that..even the big buildup ( illogical but hey) towards the siege amounts to a whimper, blink and it is over. the " twist" ending is pathetic and misses any logic.. Even genre movies need some sort of structure and have to abide by their own logic, this movie doesn't and basically betrays the viewer with the ending.

• Our main female lead isn't strong enough, this part asks a lot of emotions which she clearly cant handle.

• the monsters are underused to a degree its an insult, teasing us with images and a couple of minutes of action ( not to mention an intriguing back story).

Getting a cookie for the effort, nothing more.

You know I really got my hopes up for this one when I saw it was a French made horror/supernatural movie. I remembered the magic all those years ago when I first viewed "Brotherhood of the Wolf" and was amazed how good it was. Could this be yet another thriller classic from France?..DRUM ROLL..no. Unfortunately this fluff is poorly directed and acted. The storyline is pitiful and the ending makes you wish you had never wasted 90 minutes of your life watching this slop! First off, Charlotte the main protagonist, is a sort of punk, "rebel without a cause" who is wandering aimlessly in the backroads of rural France. She doesn't have a destination and no explanation is given. She meets some "Road Warrior" wannabes who oogle and make nasty comments at her at a gas station. Later they follow her and she sees a long-haired hippie guy hitchhiking. She decides to pick up this total stranger (maybe for safety?) and for some idiotic reason suddenly TOTALLY trusts him. Soon they are sharing smokes. She's letting him drive. She even goes to sleep. Finally the hippie drives her to his mom's old bar and cafe and that's when everything starts to ugly. Turns out his mama is a crazy old hag who likes to summon the undead, especially ghouls that were former miners. The hippie disappears causing Charlotte to go look for him and of course being the bait he gets her caught. From there the movie is basically torture, blood, torture, death, death, death, death and more death. That's right. Every single character in this film DIES. It makes you wonder why you even wasted your time.

I am not disappointed by this pretty well done horror movie. It's as I was waiting for. A flick that the Americans would never make; especially concerning the end. Perhaps the British, but certainly not the US industry.

It begins like HITCHER, goes on like BREAKDOWN or DYING ROOM ONLY and ends like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. A sort of mixed up of different kind of horror films. The director was inspired by classics. Philippe Nahon and the other actors as Emilie Dequenne and Yolande Moreau give here very impressive performances. Nahon was already in horror movies such as HAUTE TENSION, the first of the french new generation of horror features. And, as in Alexandre Aja's masterpiece, we see the same old van, the Citroën 1200 Kg - called TUBE.

Another reference. Franck Richard, the filmmaker, knows his classics.

LOL! I have to laugh at the many silly plot holes this movie suffers from, but I will give it points for grizzly humor and a chilling atmosphere. I spent most of the movie questioning why the characters were doing the stupid things they were doing, but what would a horror movie be without a lot of characters doing stupid things that put them within the grasp of some inconceivable horror along the way? The story situations are preposterous, disjointed, and inexplicable for the most part, but there is a serious creepy factor to the film over-all that almost makes it worthwhile (but not entirely). All-in-all, this film has a decent creep-out factor. Also, there is a great joke told by the film's main protagonist in the initial tavern scene.

This was a shocker of a movie. Questionable in many parts.

Like lady, WHY WOULD YOU TRUST HIM?? The ending really annoyed me, let's be honest here. LIKE ACTUALLY WHY? AND WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE TE DEAD ZOMBIE THINGS BEHIND AND JUST LEAVE???

For a movie that was this sub-par though, I actually enjoyed it. I laughed for most of the film instead of being fearful. Many plot holes and moments that I didn't really understand the logic of. At the end of this ordeal of movie I was confused of what I had just witnessed.

One of those movies that is so bad you just have to watch it all, one of the movies so bad it stays with you for a while afterward. Despite how stupid I found the entire plot, it is definitely worth a watch

TL;DR= A train wreck of a film, but an enjoyable one nonetheless. Good for a laugh because it isn't much of a horror and it will stay with you for a while afterward.