The title THEM – given an added exclamation mark for its 1954 cinematic manifestation – conjures up relatively innocuous images of giant ants from a time when all we had to fear was The Bomb that might or might not destroy everything. Fifty years on, something is out to get French teacher Olivia Bonamy and her student-partner Michael Green and, in this paranoid age, it could be anything.
There are hints at a possible supernatural element to the persecution of this nice couple : the home invaders that terrorize them for nearly the entire film seem to be able to disappear into the darkness, while incidental details include a TV that suddenly switches on in an apparently empty room and unnerving shrieking sounds that appear less than human. Parts of the film even suggest an other-worldly threat, maybe a UFO/alien invader assault. The terrifying sense of coming under attack in your own home offers a vivid metaphor for the imminent terrorist attack the 21st century media tells us we should all be fearing.
THEM sustains an ambiguity about what exactly is attacking Bonamy and Green until the very end. Even then, for once, the twist in the tale makes what has gone before scarier still, rather than undermining it for the sake of a surprise. Without giving anything away, in its final moments, the brilliantly made THEM exploits contemporary fears of a particular sector of society and suddenly becomes a variation on a particularly disturbing 70’s Euro-horror that shall remain nameless here for fear of giving the game away.
Like so many recent horror flicks, THEM opens with an assertion that is as much a threat as a statement : the familiar phrase “Based on real events”. Title cards define specific dates and times to reinforce the sense that This Really Happened. (Whether it did or not – movies don’t lie to us, right? – does not affect the film’s impact because we know it could). Set in Bucharest in 2002, it opens with a purely terrifying, slasher movie-inspired sequence involving the terrorization and killing of a teenage girl in a broken down car by an unseen presence lurking, like so many screen maniacs, in the back seat. The rest of the movie continues to use slasher elements – menacing anonymous phone calls, a woodland chase, faceless figures in the darkness – to great effect. Bonamy and Cohen have a pleasingly intimate introductory scene together before their house comes under attack by the mysterious, persistent intruders.
The fight for survival that ensues is largely shot with claustrophobic handheld urgency and set in unnerving realistic darkness rather than the kind of movie darkness that dominates the genre. The pacing is razor-sharp, there are jolting scares involving barely glimpsed figures in the shadows, and there is at least one moment that will make you jump a few feet in the air.
Relentlessly suspenseful throughout its pared-down running time, THEM delivers a sucker-punch in its final scenes as a 70’s horror-style sense of hopelessness sets in and we realize just how far beyond saving our society is. A bone-chilling final scene and the sinister closing “What happened next” captions provide a perfect, disquieting end to a movie that creeps under your skin at the start and will stay with you long after.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
