Resonnances (2006)

Here is a movie I bought without reading any kind of review, just because I liked the plot. I did read some reviews after I already bought it and they all seemed to confirm that this was a movie I would like. Tremors meets The Thing. You cant go wrong with a concept like that. Except that the thing bit wasnt really in the movie. Think Wrong turn meets Tremors. Without the rednecks. In France.

When the movie starts we get a glimpse of Earth from space. It is the year 16something and we see a meteorite crash in a french forest. A young woman is close by and goes to investigate but flees in terror as something starts to follow her underground, tremorswise. The creature kills her and we move forward to present time where a group of friends is preparing a camping weekend. Their trip is cut short however when they run out of gas in the wilderness. They find a gasstation but manage to pick up an escaped convict who has murdered several people. Things get even worse when they drive into a fog, get assaulted by a giant tentacle and drive of the edge of a cliff. Wounded, menaced by a coldblooded murderer and hunted by an alien creature, It's hammertime.

Resonnances was obviously shot on a very limited budget and it does show from time to time in some rather poor digital effects. On the other hand, these effects are still effective and it seems like the filmmakers have gone for that route instead. There are quite a few really good miniatures and although the digital effects are rather obvious and not that well integrated with the whole, they are still way better than most syfymovies and similar low budget crapfests. This movie has a heart and it shows. Where this movie slightly fails though, is the pacing. The first half consists mainly of bickering between the characters (though way better acted than I expected) and running around in the woods and this is stuff we have seen so many times before. But as soon as the movie gets into the main monsteraction, Resonnances turns into great fun. Ambitious fun. You would think that when you have a limited budget you would tone things down, but not here. The filmakers pull of quite a few awesome sequences where the underground creature trashes the environment in search of its prey and it is genuinely exciting, all the time towards a great climax.

Yes, I was really impressed with this movie. Philippe Robert, the writer/director/producer/cinematographer pulls no punches and has made an excellent monstermovie, all the more impressive when you consider the ambitious sequences they manage to pull off. Yes, there is a bit of a problem with a not so thrilling first half but the last 40 minutes really reward you with lots of fun. One thing that might tick people off is the fact that the movie was shot on standard definition video, though the cinematography looks really great considering. The dvdrelease does look a bit bland though, more like vhsquality but that never detracts from the fun. I really look forward to what these guys will produce in the future. Someone has to give them a decent budget... that would be awesome.

The dvd from Synapse is barebones, with only a trailer which sucks. It would have been nice if they would have included some sort of Making of doc, when we are dealing with such an interesting movieprocess. But no....

Oh, there is no gore. But lots of tentacles. Mmmm.... tentacles...