Since TIFF, Indomina Releasing are giving one reason after another to think that they’ll become a strong distributor for genre films essentially bolstering the output of such films for rabid fans. Today they announced their first “Euro”-title pick-up in Franck Richard’s directorial debut which is known as The Pack or by its domestic title, La meute. Expect this to be released in 2011 with all their other pick-ups.
Gist: This follows Charlotte (Emilie Dequenne), a beautiful but rough around the edges kind of girl, who drives a beat-up station wagon in the countryside of northern France. Her journey takes a turn when she picks up a mysterious hitchhiker (Benjamine Biolay), with whom she strikes an unusual bond. Stopping at a roadside diner, her new companion strangely disappears, and Charlotte finds herself knocked unconscious and held captive. She soon encounters a peculiar and disturbed woman (Yolande Moreau), and discovers that her blood is being used to feed a “pack” of flesh-eating ghouls. What will happen to her next?
Worth Noting: The Pack was indeed picked as an Official Selection at Cannes and would have received a Special Screening showing on the beach (which was a first this year), but at the last minute the rating board didn’t allow the projection as it was a film deemed for a classification of 16 and up. The film would show in a screening room at the fest, but the film really flew under the radar.
Why Do We Care?: What I generally appreciate in French horror filmmakers is that they aren’t afraid to paint the screen red, and they tend to be more concerned about atmospherics than stuffing the narrative with more plot points. Twitchfilm’s Todd Brown describes the film as “a much darker and moodier…too moody for serious gore hounds and too bloody for anyone else”. First time filmmaker Franck Richard might be a name we reference in the future.
Media: We have a French-only teaser trailer below offers some rich one-liners including one from the shotgun toting Yolande Moreau’s character who mentions something about using the juice from the lead biker’s balls for some practical purpose. The clip certainly has a campy element to it, not necessarily going with the film’s overall tone.
