The Horde

Like most national cinemas of note, France's is not without its genre and exploitation ghetto (credit the legendary Jean Rollin with opening that can of worms) but recent efforts have shown a growing Anglo-American influence that, by and large, has not been a good thing. Case in point: The Horde, written and directed by first-timers Benjamin Rocher and Yannick Dahan. A straightforward zombie film that owes as much to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds as to George Romero, the film starts promisingly and quickly detours into the kind of escalating gore and ridiculousness that always betrays a Hollywood resumé piece. Given how little interest foreign-language horror typically stirs among any but die-hard cult film buffs (even on the midnight film circuit where this film is set to be seen), odds are Rocher and Dahan will end up junketing their first studio picture before The Horde even makes it to DVD.

The film begins as a fairly routine, if gritty, policier in which a cop's brutal slaying at the hands of a criminal gang precipitates an off-the-clock revenge attack by his friends: Franck (Aurélien Recoing), Ouessem (Jean-Pierre Martins), Tony (Antoine Oppenheim) and the deceased officer's former lover, Aurore (Claude Perron). But the ambush on the crooks' well-fortified housing project headquarters goes instantly wrong, and the rogue detectives end up at the sadistic mercy of some very scary baddies, led by brothers Adewale (Eriq Ebouaney) and Bola (Doudou Masta).

There's an inordinate amount of tension in this moment, especially at such an early point in the film. But that doesn't stop Dahan and Rocher from defusing it with what is almost certainly meant to be a bizarre, absurdist joke: a zombie attack. There's never any explanation for why the vast tenement is suddenly swarming with zombies or why they appear to have simultaneously taken siege to the city of Paris, which can be seen burning in the distance. It doesn't matter. Cops and robbers must now put aside their differences, join together and chop, shoot, bludgeon and gore their way out of the building.

As anyone with even a passing knowledge of the genre knows, the only issue here is which of the group will be the lone survivor and in what creatively savage ways will the others die. On those two counts, Dahan and Rocher largely play it safe, following genre convention where expected, while taking advantage of the claustrophobic confines to deliver a predictable array of competent, occasionally creative set pieces. That said, nearly every attempt to capitalize on the post-28 Days Later resurgence in zombie cinema has faithfully followed script with little deviation. Most such films, The Horde included, end up more closely resembling a first-person "shooter" video game than a movie. About the only thing that keeps The Horde from feeling hopelessly cheesy is the fact that its makers know it's cheesy and, in fact, revel in it. That doesn't necessarily make it a good or an enjoyable film but does help it to be sufficiently diverting so as not to be a complete and total bore.

Distributor: IFC Films
Cast: Claude Perron, Jean-Pierre Martins, Eriq Ebouaney, Aurélian Recoing and Doudou Masta
Director: Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher
Screenwriter: Arnaud Bordas, Stéphane Moïssakis, Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher
Producers: Raphaël Rocher
Genre: Horror; French- and Czech-languages, subtitled
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 90 min.
Release date: TBD