RESONNANCES

France | 2006 Directed by Phillipe Robert Starring Yann Sundberg Vincent Lecompte Sophie Michard Color | 83 Minutes | Not Rated Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC) Synapse Films

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	Review by Doug Red Film:6 :DVD:6

It's just another typical party day for leader Yann (Yann Sundberg), gamer geek Vincent (Vincent Lecompte) and jock Thomas (Romain Ogerau): gets some girls together and go clubbing at the Panorama. Unfortunately, the Panorama is fairly far away, and on the way they have to pass through a remote mountainous region where there is supposed to be a ghostly woman in white who lures weary travelers to their doom. As they drive through the area following the girls in a separate car, the lads run out of gas. The three friends push their car to a petrol station where they pick up Sebastien (Patrick Mons), an escaped psychopathic killer who claims he's stranded at the abandoned station (which is only abandoned because he killed the attendant). No sooner than you can say "Vanishing Hitchhiker", the ghostly vision appears to the group, dropping them into a world of horror.

It turns out the ghost phenomenon is related to an ancient interstellar evil that landed hundreds of years ago, and humans are exactly the kinds of entrees that it prefers on its menu. Now it's up to the group to pull together to survive, but will Sebastien be able to control his murderous tendencies for long? Will injured Thomas ever regain consciousness? Will Vincent put down his handheld video game long enough to realize what's going on? And did the girls make it past the ghost, or are they trapped as well?

In the advertisements for the film, it's compared to Tremors (which makes sense — the alien creature burrows underground and is attracted to both noise and vibration), The Thing (which is harder to see, but there is a fair amount of paranoia on display), and The Evil Dead (there are some inventive shots, but nothing quite on the level of Sam Raimi's tour de force). There are two better examples of cultural touchstones that Resonnances pulls from however. Like The Blair Witch Project, it uses its low budget filmmaking aesthetic to its advantage, creating an extra air of danger due to the lack of polished imagery and more naturalistic acting techniques. And like television's Lost, it uses many of the same kinds of visual cues which made the Smoke Monster so memorable to also give the alien being an impressive and scary presence, such as strange noises as it manifests and trees being knocked down in the distance as it rushes towards our heroes, creating the impression of an immense and powerful creature while keeping its physical appearances to a minimum.

Ultimately, Philipe Robert's Resonnances is a pretty decent little low-budget horror thriller that delivers a good time. The effects are quite good for the budget, and the pacing does keep the story moving along at a nice clip with very few dull spots. Vincent gets some well-rounded character moments, going from almost autistically detached from the others to being a major action hero. It is a very low budget film, though, which means that there sometimes isn't enough light to make out what's going on in a few places, and the CGI frequently shows its limitations. If you're in the mood for a quality micro-budget film, however, Resonnances is well worth checking out.

Synapse Films release of Resonnances is largely bare bones, but the bones are well structured. The 1:85 letterboxed transfer looks about as good as a feature lensed on digital video is going to look, although it should be noted that it is not anamorphic (because of the way the movie was originally shot). Audio is French only, but you can hear it in Digital 5.1 and 2.0. The subtitles are easy to read, and appear to capture what is actually being said literally, which is a good thing because you can get a sense of the French culture from time to time. The trailer is on hand, but I'd recommend watching the film itself first before viewing it. 12/17/10

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