I had the chance to sit down and watch the 2023 French horror movie "Gueules Noires" (aka "The Deep Dark") here in 2024, and given my lifelong love romance with the horror genre, of course I needed no persuasion to do so. Sure, I had never heard about the movie, but that hardly mattered as it was a horror movie that I had not yet watched.
The storyline is pretty straightforward, though you need to sit through about an hour of writer and director Mathieu Turi trying to establish the characters, story and atmosphere. And truth be told, that was just way too long of nothing overly interesting happening, and the movie suffered terribly from that. And with a run time of 103 minutes, squandering 60 minutes just wasn't a smart thing to do.
Needless to say that given my very limited exposure to French cinema, then I wasn't familiar with the actors on the cast list. Though I will say that the acting performances in the movie were fair.
"Gueules Noires" might be worth checking out if you enjoy horror movies that include a subterranean setting, strange alien-like creature design, gore, and a good old fashioned creature feature.
The creature in the movie was definitely interesting. I liked the design, and it is always great to see practical effects on the screen in horror movies, as there is something aesthetically pleasing to watching practical effects over CGI effects.
Just a real shame that writer and director Mathieu Turi squandered a full hour on something that could have been done in a fraction of that time, because it was seriously wasting screen time. And the overall movie suffered from that part. If it had been done in a different way, a quicker way without wasting an hour, the movie would have been way more enjoyable to sit through.
Sure, I found "Gueules Noires" to be a watchable movie, though it is hardly a movie that I will return to watch a second time, as it just didn't have enough contents in the storyline to support a second viewing, and the fact that you have to sit through 60 minutes of virtually nothing but people milling about underground just didn't really count as enthralling entertainment to me.
The ending of the movie, however, left much to be desired. It was a laughable ending to say the least, not to mention a slap to the face of those audience members who stuck through 103 minutes of watching the movie.
My rating of "Gueules Noires" lands on a five out of ten stars.
