Frontière(s)/Frontier(s)

There are no lunatics in the closet in Frontière(s), writer/director Xavier Gens’s NC-17 French-language gorefest. There are lunatics — more than half the cast — but the film has no interest in startling you, instead offering with a clear eye and a steady hand the most abject horror it can imagine. Deadly riots erupt in Paris after a contested election, and the pregnant Yasmine (Karina Testa) and her criminal friends escape to a secluded country hostel where they’ll be safe from the law. What they’re not safe from, it turns out, is a murderous family of cannibalistic Nazis and their endless parade of horrific death. The film borrows heavily from horror films new and old, but Gens’s flashy camera work and unflinching sadism carry Frontière(s) through the lack of novelty. Although the beginning and end are muddled with a superficial political subtext, the middle, to fans of the genre, is red gold. 108 minutes | French | Circle