If I've learned anything from horror movies, it's that Eastern European children are creepy and evil. They're always dirty, dressed in rags, and psychotically unhinged. Remember those little Slovokian brats in Hostel? They crushed a man's head with a rock, for God's sake! You don't see any American children doing that, do you? I mean, they do take guns to school and make videos of themselves beating the crap out of their classmates, but at least they're always freshly showered.
I've never been to Slovakia or Romania, where the events depicted in today's movie supposedly went down for reals, so I don't know what the children are actually like. I bet most of them are pretty nice, not a murderous thought in their heads. A lot of them are talented gymnasts. I've never gotten a homicidal vibe off a Romanian gymnast.The French thriller Them (not to be confused with the one about giant killer ants) tells the story of Clementine and Lucas, two lovers living in a roomy old house in the Romanian countryside. Clementine teaches at the local French school and Lucas spends his days pretending to write a novel. They eat dinner, watch TV, giggle and chase each other around--you know, couple shit. It's all very romantic and not at all scary...
...until the phone rings. Clementine answers and is confronted with unintelligible babbling. She hangs up and decides to join an exhausted Lucas (tuckered out from playing computer pinball all day long, apparently) in bed. She wakes up to strange noises outside and finds that her car has been moved from where she parked it earlier. Then shit gets crazy. The power goes out, menacing figures in hoodies make bird noises while playing the scariest version of Flashlight Tag ever committed to film, and somehow our heroes end up running through the dimly-lit, yet surprisingly spacious, Romanian sewer system.At 1 hour and 17 minutes, Them is a sleek, unrelenting piece of cinema. It grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until the penultimate shot, a scene reminiscent of the final moment in The Descent, another horror masterpiece involving dark, tight places and souless creatures bent on murder crouching in every shadow. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those cave monsters in Descent hailed from Eastern Europe. I'm just saying.
