Frontier(s)

OK, you'd think even the French would know to run away from a remote motel run by crazy people. But perhaps if you have a suitcase full of someone else's money and you've been smoking pot, you are not so picky. This is opposite view of the north of France to Welcome to the Sticks. Here it is a scary place with abandoned cars, mines and a preoccupation with guns and butchery equipment.

Three men and a woman on the run from a Paris riot show up at a motel and once the creepy credentials of the management are established it becomes a case of working out who is going to survive (not really any surprise there), in what gruesome ways are the others going to die and what the total body count will be. There are two reasons for a policy of killing motel guests: firstly to rob them and the second one I've already hinted at. We have Texas Chainsaw Massacre situation with some silly left over Nazi in hiding trappings. There are plenty of messy deaths, in fact the rule seems to be never kill two people in the same way. There are also a number of stupid decisions leading to fatal results (horror film makers love their Darwin and it wouldn't do if the protagonists escaped 30 minutes into the film!).

There is also some good bits of dialogue before the killing starts. But the makers of Frontier(s) seem to have left behind any semblance of a sensible plot when the protagonists left Paris. But sensible plots are rarely important for makers and watchers of splatter movies.

Ian's rating 3/5