Frontiers

Initially Frontiers comes across as a socio-politic take on the rioting that occurred in November 2005, where protesters violently took to the streets to voice their anger over the deaths of youths involving Parisian police.

Set in the volatile Paris suburbs, we’re dropped, straight away, into a panicked escape where brother and sister, Samir and Yasmine, are desperately trying to seek refuge from the all engulfing lawlessness. Arriving at seemingly safe place, it emerges that Samir’s injured, and his injuries quickly become gravely apparent. Meanwhile, a group of youths (Farid, Alex and Tom) are playing suburban militia, shooting, fighting and generally agitating police. Likewise, they’re also seeking refuge, but for seemingly different reasons, and eventually the two groups come together. Amidst the tension, they hastily devise exit routes: one heading to the French border via a hospital, the other simply hightailing it to the French border.

And it’s here where even the most intense police interrogation quickly seems like a paradise when both groups end up at a seemingly harmless rural French motel. After indulging in a feral group orgy, two of the group find themselves held at gunpoint, being ferociously beaten with a sledgehammer, before making a hasty getaway. Beaten and bloody, and trying to fend off a Land Rover with a Metro, it’s little surprise they end the chase in an upturned car, in an abandoned mineshaft. While they’re toiling for escape, their friends head for the assigned motel rendezvous, only to courteously be driven to towards the old mine shaft, and their imminent fate.

Much like the hapless group take the wrong turn, Frontiers tip toes into the cellar, absently wanders into the abandoned warehouse, and indulges in a wealth of horror clichés. Okay, so it’s nigh on impossible conjuring a fresh twist on maniac meets people - maniac wants to kill people, people try to escape, some don’t make it, maniac either dies or escapes to star in another tired sequel - but endeavouring to make it bloodier, grislier and more sinister than the rest is laudable.

There are no additional features to the Frontiers plot line, but Hitman director Xavier Gens at least makes it worth sitting out through a combination of sickly oddball characters and Karina Testa’s increasingly unhinged star turn as Yasmina. With the same rustic, grainy atmosphere Delicatessen deviantly delighted in utilised so well, the desolate rural expanse and old mine shaft is just as easily interchangeable with an outback American farmhouse, but throw in a tyrannical Nazi grandfather with a penchant for tickling your heels with pincers and you at least get a bit of a guffaw to add to the gore. Oh, and did I forget to mention that the bad guys were Nazi cannibals?

If you have a particularly sanguinary itch that needs scraping then Frontiers' fondness for the graphic and grisly will have you curling your toes. From the little steam room of horrors to the slicing Achilles tendons, from the head dissolving shotgun rounds to the House Of The Dead-style meat cellar, it’s a world away from the film’s politically agitated beginnings.

So the Christian imagery is hurried and pointless – yes, they’re bad, good will prevail – and Frontiers might teeter on the kitsch value of horror in the way Devil’s Rejects did, but there’s enough signature killings and flesh eating to make you think twice about buying that lovely little cottage in Beaune.

Released on DVD on 7th July 2008 by Optimum Home Entertainment.

Written by Reef Younis.