Instant Foreign: High Lane

Parlez vous crap?  This French film is an interesting one in that it appears to be ripping off a couple different films.  Any fan of modern French cinema shouldn't be surprised by this, as the country appears to have just discovered the Grindhouse craze of the 1970's over the last several years.  Killer children?  Ils has them.  Texas Chainsaw Massacre knock-offs?  Frontiers is one.  How about a movie where a pregnant woman is chased by a knife?  Okay, you guys still own that bizarre idea.  So what is High Lane?  In essence, it's The Descent...just in reverse.  They also throw in some Texas Chainsaw Massacre to boot.  I hope you like bickering people!  Let's just skip right up with our helicopter to the...

Basically, a bunch of people go hiking.  Two of them are really into it.  The other three have their own little drama going on.  One of the guys is dating the other girl on trip, while the other guy used to date her.  Who arranged this trip exactly?  As if the forced love triangle was not enough, she has some sort of vague trauma that the film keeps cutting back to via flashback.  If you want a good explanation for it, look elsewhere.  I honestly have nothing here!  I should also point out that the boyfriend is afraid of heights...and also an idiot for going here!  They climb for a bit and cross a conveniently-placed bridge.  Oops, it just collapsed.

More bickering and climbing occurs after the collapse.  You see, that was the only way across.  Who designed this path- the Bender family?!?  The group gets split up and one guy gets caught in a bear trap.  Things only get worse as he's kidnapped and tortured when left alone.  Don't worry- they find him later for one of those 'I get to say one sentence and die' moments.  The rest wander about a bit until another one of them gets killed.  It may have something to do with this guy...

The whole ending of the movie feels like what they wanted to do the whole time...but couldn't or wouldn't.  They run afoul of the killer- who's more armed and resourceful than Rambo himself!- and they tease torture for a bit.  In lieu of that actually happening, the guy skulks about a cuts up dead bodies.  You totally killed those corpses dude!  The characters continue to act like assholes and not work towards their own self-preservation.  The deaths suddenly pile up, which seems really rushed.  The film seems to end happily, but actually ends with a dark bit...that makes no sense.  If you can't make your twist ending logical, don't bother!  Thankfully, they found time for some pathos.  The End.

You can't climb high enough to escape this film!  The plot is alright, but feels a bit silly.  The characters go climbing and exploring on a path that turns out to be closed.  Thanks for taking them, idiot guy who dies first! I have to wonder about the logic here, by the way.  This path is closed...but there is no sign or fence blocking it.  I also have to wonder why there's not a guard here, since the ending implies that hundreds of people die in the area!  The problem here is that the characters are not good.  On top of making a horror film with a cast of six people (one of whom is the killer), they make me not care about any of the deaths.  The characters are jerks for the most part, show brief stints of humanity and suddenly become assholes again.  Pick a character!  Nothing about this movie really stands out, which is the big problem.  It's not really terrible, it's just kind of...well, there.  Bear in mind that I watched this on Streaming (as with all of these), so it was only available Dubbed.  Do the Subtitles and original script make it better?  Maybe.

Up next, Spain gets their turn this week.  Unfortunately, their film is about Paintball...seriously.  Stay tuned...