La meute

I first saw this in 2011 on a dvd which I own.

Revisited it recently.

The film started off very well and i thot it might b a good thriller like Kurt Russell's Breakdown but never mind it took another approach n succeeded as a horror film albeit with a few flaws.

A young female Charlotte, probably after her break goes for a road trip all alone and gets harassed by a group of bikers at a snack store to which she just ignores n rides off on the empty road only to see the bikers behind and a hitchhiker Max asking for a lift.

She gives the lift to Max and later they both stop at La Spack, a rundown roadside eatery run by a fat n sturdy woman.

The biker gang reappears and when one of the gang members is about to rape Max, the entire gang is chased off by the owner of the restaurant. Moments later, Max vanishes after heading to the bathroom. Charlotte inquires the owner n a retired cop but to no avail.

How can a person wear a coat of mail most of the time?

Now who stands next to a person presumed dead/down by facing away?

How the creatures were able to get inside n outside the mud without effort?

How the creatures were able to hang the gìrl upside down?

Why the bikers rested at the same spot. Also where were the bikers when the lady took the meals for the creatures for the first time.

And why wud any biker jus rest at somebody else's property by trespassing? Weren't they suppose to move on the roads.

The background story of the miners doesnt add to the scariness. They shud have jus left em as creatures from the marsh.

We have Matthias Schoenaerts in a tiny role as a gang member.

Claustrophobic n bleak landscape wise, the film has a similar tone of that of Calvaire and the wet, muddy n uneven roads wise, this will remind Straightheads aka Closure.

First off, I'm sick of "tough girl" lead roles. A cigarette, leather jacket and a sneer is not character development.

As the plot developed it also dragged. I was wondering if it was going to be another "hostel" or similar torture/gore flick. And, I was starting to get annoyed because, I was already bored. Then came the twist of "The Pack" being revealed and it was original. It got my attention and I thought it might pick up.

Problem, every single character in this movie was such an overacted, quirky oddball, that the creatures are underwhelming. There is no prior reference to where they came from in the landscape or on the road traveled. The explanation of them is hastily thrown at you with a few unconvincing news clippings found later. The policeman was just a stupid character in a stupid shirt and according to the films own time line everyone was wearing the same exact clothes for a week (I know its France and that is a possibility). The biker crew was ridiculously awful, especially the one that wouldn't stop giggling. They reacted with the slightest skepticism when told monsters are coming to get them. When the big gory action scene comes you just don't care.

It was a very slow movie. There was not enough script to fill an hour and a half. With a bad, weird dream sequence ending that gives no closure.

On a lonely country road, Charlotte ( a young angry woman ) is travelling in her rusty old car ... clearly running away from something, which is unclear. Along the way she picks up a hitch hiker by the name of Max. Max is a strange man, but Charlotte could use the company. When they stop at a Truck Stop, owned by a woman named "La Spack" , Max mysteriously goes missing when he goes into the mens restroom. When no one else is giving her satisfactory answers concerning his whereabouts, Charlotte decides to investigate further, and unknowingly falls into a trap.

This is another very recent New Wave French Horror that may initially disappoint you to start with, but on second and third viewing, the film comes across as a lot of fun, but not much else. The characters were paper thin, but there were some very memorable performances, in particular, Yolande Moreau as La Spack. A very sinister and unique type of villain. That was one old woman not to be messed with! I loved the costume designs for the creatures, which also brought some fairly decent gore as well! Unfortunately the gore was few and far between and for a film of this nature, it was a little disappointing to see that the bloodbath that was on offer, wasn't as bloody as it could and should have been. The ending is fairly straight forward, which concludes a fairly straight forward film. If you are a French Horror fanatic, such as myself, this one will interest you. If you are just a casual viewer, this movie isn't something you haven't seen all before.

Particularly since the new Millennium, France is by far THE nation to keep under close monitoring when it comes to the release of original, boundary-breaking and downright shocking new movies in the horror genre! They released already a handful of instant classics, like "High Tension", "Inside", "Frontier(s)" and "Martyrs" and a fair bunch of titles that are far more worthwhile to check out than the average American or Asian accomplishments. Naturally, of course, they also have their share of epic failures and the inevitable "close-but-no-cigar" efforts. "The Pack", a co-production with Belgium - would fit right into this last category. Writer/director Franck Richard mixes old and tiresome genre clichés with fresh and courageous ideas, and the overall result is a massively uneven and quirky film. What starts out as a seemingly commonplace rural road horror movie abruptly alters into something unclassifiable; partially survival flick and partially zombie adventure. But not your typical kind of flesh-eating rotten corpses, but more like the pioneering type of zombies as they featured in "White Zombie", "I walked with a Zombie" and "Plague of the Zombies". The sudden change of course I found titillating, but these most fascinating parts of the screenplay are underdeveloped and chaotic. Perhaps Richard shouldn't have wasted his (and our) time with the overlong, dull and derivative first half and should have moved on to the more creative and ingenious plot a lot quicker. But the main issue of "The Pack", according to yours truly at least, lies with the mundane character development and ineffective atmosphere building. Lead chick Charlotte is another headstrong and rebellious feminist on the run for something which we don't know. She picks up a mysterious and not-so-handsome stranger whose silence clearly reveals a hidden agenda. They encounter psychopathic bikers, a creepy corpulent woman owning a ramshackle truck-stop diner and a goofy old guy with a funny T-shirt. These are hardly new and exciting characters to feature in a horror movie and thus you set your expectations quite low from the beginning already. The numerous attempts to insert black humor completely miss their effect and Franck Richard also doesn't make full use of the morbid set pieces and filming locations. The ghouls (and the brief info we receive of their background) compensate for part of the disappointment, though. They're very disturbing and petrifying monsters to behold. They actually look quite Clive Barkeresque, if you ask me. There's some decent acting as well, most notably from Yolande Moreau as "La Spack" and the terrific Philippe Nahon, whom genre fanatics will certainly recognize immediately from "Haute Tension", "Irréversible", "Seul Contre Tous" and "Calvaire".

Rule number I forget in horror: Don't leave someone behind when they've "disappeared". It will come back to haunt you, or the people responsible for his "disappearance" will get you. That's what happens in the French horror film "The Pack."

Charlotte (Emilie Dequenne) picks up a hitchhiker named Max (Benjamin Biolay) and they go to a local truck-stop diner. They running into a gang of degenerate bikers (is there any other kind in movies?), only to have said bikers get scared off by the owner of the restaurant La Spack (Jean-Pierre Jeunet regular Yolande Moreau.) When Max doesn't return after a trip to the bathroom, Charlotte finds herself in the clutches of Spack, who turns out to be Max's mother-and who feeds people to ground dwelling, humanoid flesh eaters.

I won't deny that for what it is, "The Pack" manages to be fun albeit unspectacular. It's got a nasty and welcome streak of black humor that doesn't go overboard into a horror/comedy route, which is kind of refreshing. It's also capably directed, has some good performances (especially from Moreau, who seems to be having a blast as the villain), some decent atmosphere, and some choice gore. Also, Phillipe Nahon shows up wearing a shirt you've probably seen online that says "I F#ck on the First Date", which automatically bumps this up half a star.

However, as I said, the end result feels kind of unspectacular. That's mostly because of the fact that most of this is either predictable or familiar, and none of it is particularly suspenseful or scary. You know from the get go that La Spack is up to no good, what with her threatening the bikers with a gun and coming off as loony. We also get the requisite nods to other, better horror movies, including a near end siege straight of of "Night of the Living Dead" (or if you want to be obscure, Robert Voskanian's sole directorial effort "The Child"), and yet more references to the likes of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." That reminds me: do we really need another visual tribute to the door slamming from that movie?

As it is, "The Pack" is far from a classic, and not in the higher tier of the recent wave of French horror. However, it's disposable, mostly unoffensive fun that's not spectacular but does a good enough job, and would make a fun triple bill with "The Horde" and "Frontier(s)."