SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

striddy-217 This was a shocker of a movie. Questionable in many parts.Like lady, WHY WOULD YOU TRUST HIM?? The ending really annoyed me, let's be honest here. LIKE ACTUALLY WHY? AND WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE TE DEAD ZOMBIE THINGS BEHIND AND JUST LEAVE???For a movie that was this sub-par though, I actually enjoyed it. I laughed for most of the film instead of being fearful. Many plot holes and moments that I didn't really understand the logic of. At the end of this ordeal of movie I was confused of what I had just witnessed.One of those movies that is so bad you just have to watch it all, one of the movies so bad it stays with you for a while afterward. Despite how stupid I found the entire plot, it is definitely worth a watchTL;DR= A train wreck of a film, but an enjoyable one nonetheless. Good for a laugh because it isn't much of a horror and it will stay with you for a while afterward.

fedor8 "I told you not to pick up hitchhikers" says the buffoonish old cop to the damsel-in-distress, as he frees her from her cage. So that must be the movie's message: don't give rides to hitchhikers because they might be merely bait to get you to stop over in a seedy backwoods diner, where a fat woman will kidnap you, and then prepare you as food for her brood of dead/undead bloodthirsty demons-from-beneath-the-surface sons. I think it's a lesson we can all agree on is both useful and intelligent. I, for one, have often considered picking up hitchhikers, but then changed my mind at the last moment, fearing that the hitchhiker might be one of those numerous cannibals (or at the very least friends-of-cannibals) so I always thought "nah, not worth the risk; if they stick me in a cage and try to force-feed me with weird nutrients through a tube as I sit shackled in a torture-chair, how do I know that I won't be annoyed, or even eaten?" This is probably why I am still alive and not being digested in the guts of a French-movie hell-demon-zombie.So how did the events in this highly original flick even come about? It all started when the family from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" downloaded the "Motel Hell" DVD one day. They became instant fans of this "classic". This life-changing cinematic experience lead them to the decision to take an extensive French-language course. A year later they moved to rural France, where the male clan members got jobs at the local mine. A mine accident occurred and the fine young cannibal males all died. Then – as is the case with all buried/killed miners - they rose from the dead, then lost their eyesight, started looking like the creature from "Pan's Labyrinth", and then cried out in one voice, loudly: "Mom, we're moles now, and we want be to fed like moles… sort of. Human Tofu, pleeeeease!" All clear?It's just another brainless, depraved, sadistic-for-the-sake-of-it French flick, without an ounce of logic or purpose. The only thing that differentiates LM from similar turds, such as "Martyrs" and "L'interieur", is that this particular celluloid disaster has elements of fantasy in it, whereas most other Nouveau Extremisme de la France turdeuax don't.The movie completely lost me in what I consider a crucial scene – and by "crucial" I mean crucially MORONIC scene: when the girl and the hitchhiker approach his farm early on, they see a young woman wrapped in cellophane, running frantically and bumping into furniture, eventually knocking herself unconscious. This amazingly odd event, which would have had anyone suddenly very wary of entering the diner, left our damsel COMPLETELY cold. She just didn't care. Are we to assume that in rural France it is customary to welcome diner guests by hiring women to run around, wrapped in cellophane, while they bump into things randomly? Judging from the damsel's reaction – yes. This scene was crucial because it took me out of the movie, i.e. from that point onwards I simply couldn't take these absurd characters seriously, hence I stopped taking the movie seriously, hence I didn't care what happens. When a few minutes later three absurd/fictional bikers started pounding the cellophane-wrapped girl in the face viciously, that merely confirmed that I was watching an extremely dumb movie. A little later, guess what happens? Well, what MUST happen in every perverse French movie: a man has to be raped. (The cinematic tradition of male-on-male rape is a one that French film-makers carefully nurture.) Fortunately for her son, Momma Texas Chainsaw arrives with a shotgun at the last moment, points it at the very unrealistic bikers, thereby sparing her offspring a very painful introduction into the bizarre world of French-movie sodomy.It's not entirely clear why Momma Texas Chainsaw's mole-sons had decided not to eat the damsel when she was on their menu that one evening. Perhaps they preferred Tofu that day? (Their Oriental victim had the word "Tofu" branded on his forehead. I did say the movie was fairly retarded.) Nor is it at all clear why Momma Texas Chainsaw is immune to bullets; she got shot, point blank, and yet she stood up later without even a bullet mark or any trace of blood staining her beautiful peasant-slasher attire. Later on, we have more confusion when the three very fictional bikers reappear, and then barely react to having a freshly severed head thrown at them through a window. Apparently, rural French bikers get that all the time – body parts being hurled at them. It doesn't faze them.In fact, these bikers later UNITE with the damsel and Momma Texas Chainsaw's only non-mole son, against her and her mole brood. And no, it's not a tongue-in-cheek movie. IT'S. SIMPLY. STUPID.Nor is it clear why the old cop behaves in such a bizarre way. (Nor why he is so daft as to lean on the cage where the obviously undead Momma Texas Chainsaw resided.) Must everyone be insane in a French horror film? Even the good guys? Sure, why not. This is a very French movie, don't forget.LM can't even stick to its own rules. First the mole-zombies move very slowly, but later on they're suddenly Olympics sprint champions. Even their numbers shift. At first there are four, but later a dozen of them – and we know that Momma Texas Chainsaw fed only a handful. At the end of these 80 minutes of sheer twaddle, the damsel eventually loses her battle against evil, and ends up hanging from a rope, upside-down, while her 38th liter of blood drips down her face (she's got a leg missing, see). In LM, it's not just the mole-zombies that defy the laws of physics, biology, and even the most basic logic.

Coventry Particularly since the new Millennium, France is by far THE nation to keep under close monitoring when it comes to the release of original, boundary-breaking and downright shocking new movies in the horror genre! They released already a handful of instant classics, like "High Tension", "Inside", "Frontier(s)" and "Martyrs" and a fair bunch of titles that are far more worthwhile to check out than the average American or Asian accomplishments. Naturally, of course, they also have their share of epic failures and the inevitable "close-but-no-cigar" efforts. "The Pack", a co-production with Belgium - would fit right into this last category. Writer/director Franck Richard mixes old and tiresome genre clichés with fresh and courageous ideas, and the overall result is a massively uneven and quirky film. What starts out as a seemingly commonplace rural road horror movie abruptly alters into something unclassifiable; partially survival flick and partially zombie adventure. But not your typical kind of flesh-eating rotten corpses, but more like the pioneering type of zombies as they featured in "White Zombie", "I walked with a Zombie" and "Plague of the Zombies". The sudden change of course I found titillating, but these most fascinating parts of the screenplay are underdeveloped and chaotic. Perhaps Richard shouldn't have wasted his (and our) time with the overlong, dull and derivative first half and should have moved on to the more creative and ingenious plot a lot quicker. But the main issue of "The Pack", according to yours truly at least, lies with the mundane character development and ineffective atmosphere building. Lead chick Charlotte is another headstrong and rebellious feminist on the run for something which we don't know. She picks up a mysterious and not-so-handsome stranger whose silence clearly reveals a hidden agenda. They encounter psychopathic bikers, a creepy corpulent woman owning a ramshackle truck-stop diner and a goofy old guy with a funny T-shirt. These are hardly new and exciting characters to feature in a horror movie and thus you set your expectations quite low from the beginning already. The numerous attempts to insert black humor completely miss their effect and Franck Richard also doesn't make full use of the morbid set pieces and filming locations. The ghouls (and the brief info we receive of their background) compensate for part of the disappointment, though. They're very disturbing and petrifying monsters to behold. They actually look quite Clive Barkeresque, if you ask me. There's some decent acting as well, most notably from Yolande Moreau as "La Spack" and the terrific Philippe Nahon, whom genre fanatics will certainly recognize immediately from "Haute Tension", "Irréversible", "Seul Contre Tous" and "Calvaire".

jwoodliff-863-326904 I saw The Pack (La Meute) at celluloid screams horror festival last fall & really enjoyed it , i think Franck Richard did an awesome job and although I've heard critics complain about the film being like 3 different movies which i do agree with , i liked that about it , nobody minded it when Rodriguez did it with From Dusk til Dawn which i must say is 1 of my fave vampire films of all time. I loved the ideas , the gore , the acting , the SFX , the direction , the cinematography , the mood of the film , i loved almost everything about it , the only thing that i would have liked to have been different is the design of the (pack) creatures , they reminded me of the crawlers from The Descent a little but the special make-up effects that brought them to life were great. Overall: I thought this was a great addition to the new wave french horror scene and can't wait for it to be released on DVD on the 4th of July , i will be sure to pick it up 1st thing on that date. Highly recommended especially to French horror lovers like myself. P.S. Can't wait to see what Franck Richard comes up with next