The Friday Night Fright: The Ordeal
This is one very strange film. A travelling entertainer, after a performance at a care home, barely manages to extricate himself from the female occupants and workers with his pants on. Heading off for a performance at a Christmas party, little does he suspect that he’ll soon be the object of desire for the male of the species.
Breaking down on the way he finds himself at a local inn and we discover the back roads of France come close to the American backwoods of Deliverance in holiday destinations to avoid. It’s not just the inn keeper who’s weird but the local villagers too; taking a walk in the woods he stumbles across a group of locals and discovers that they take animal husbandry quite literally in those parts.
The village’s lack of women is never explained but this is the sort of film that would fall apart if the script went into too much detail. In essence it’s a modern Grimm fairy tale and like all the best fairy tales has a strong vein of black humour running through it.
I’m not really sure if I enjoyed it or not but it did keep my attention for its relatively short running time and is definitely unlike anything you’ll see coming out of Hollywood. It’s well made and I’ll be interested to see what director Fabrice Du Welz turns his hand too next. While he’s obviously influenced by American horror films (as well as Deliverance the film pays homage to the dinner scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre) I can’t see him doing an Alexandre Aja.
