The Mist proved there's a fine line between shocking viewers and sending them into a depressed funk. Although France's Them (also known as Ils) is along the same lines, it's nowhere near as grim as the former movie. I appreciate the filmmakers' goal of providing as pure and terrifying an experience as possible in a horror movie with very few unnecessary add-ons. However, after an impressive start, Them starts to unwind and forgets a vital element which even some of the most stone-faced genre features possess: a sense of humor about itself.

Clémentine (Olivia Bonamy) teaches French to Romanian schoolchildren. Lucas (Michaël Cohen) spends the day alternating between writing and playing pinball on his laptop. Together, the happy couple share a rather spacious abode in the countryside. But one night, their peace becomes shattered by the arrival of -- all together now -- Strange Things that start happening. Seemingly harmless prank phone calls and strange noises outside quickly escalate into an all-out attack on the pair. As their car gets stolen and electricity shut off, Clémentine and Lucas discover that a number of hooded individuals have taken it upon themselves to engage them in a demented game, one that will forces the lovers to stay on their toes if they want to make it through the night alive. 

Yes, Them sounds no different than almost any other horror flick you could pick at random off the shelf. But the idea behind the film is not simply to rehash a done-to-death formula all over again but to try and get back to what made these types of movies so frightening to begin with. Them harkens back to a time when cold-blooded cinema slayers were true embodiments of evil instead of walking cliches. I can admire this premise, this idea of getting to the point instead of wasting the audience's time with convention after convention. Still, although it works for a little while, Them never gets around to having at least a tiny bit of fun. That doesn't mean I popped the flick into my DVD player in hopes of seeing a self-referential festival of gore, but at least many of those dumb slashers movies knew they were dumb and accordingly served up as many ludicrous blood-and-guts moments as they could muster.

Them, on the other hand, maintains a buttoned-up attitude that, like the British slasher satire Severance, proves to be its undoing. Is the film scary? At times, it's very intense; it helps that you never get a clear view of who or what is attacking the protagonists, ratcheting up the suspense as "they" proceed to creep the living daylights out of their targets. Bonamy and Cohen are also perfectly sympathetic leads, although a couple of their actions seem a little idiotic even by slasher movie standards.

Like The Mist, Them isn't so much concerned with making itself into a "funhouse" sort of feature as it is with filling every frame with an aura of hopelessness and despair. Unfortunately, when this tone starts to click in, the movie becomes less suspenseful, as the characters head toward a foregone conclusion, one leaving you feeling more depressed than scared. 

MY RATING: ** 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by Dark Sky Films and rated "R" for some violence and terror.)