Before anything else, hats off for making a really scary movie where there’s almost nothing scary going on. There’s no creepy music, no creaky doors — but a mood of dread where you know some shit is gonna’ go down you just don’t know how or when.
(spoiler alert)
But I don’t know if I buy the whole movie. Not just the “NO ONE is sending the tapes” Twilight Zone ending — I kinda expected that and, frankly, I’ve got no beef with it. I guess I just think that if this movie is to be an indictment of guilty people. . .our lead character didn’t do anything that bad. He didn’t kill anyone. And he was six years old, for Pete’s sake! And, if anyone is going to be sympathetic to the plight of the Algerians in France, it is going to be a bookish intellectual. You get the impression he came from a leftist home — the parents almost adopted the Algerian boy, right? It isn’t like he comes from a long line of, I dunno, shipping magnates who made their fortune off of slave labor. Unless… is this the point? Is the point of the movie that guilt permeates the soul of even those who aren’t guilty of anything? Oooh, Twilight Zone ending indeed.
I just realized another thing that kinda irked me about this film. They kinda took the premise from Lost Highway! (Well, buried in Lost Highway.)