A French school teacher living in Romania goes home to her huge dilapidated mansion in the woods, only to find an unknown group of intruders invade her home and terrorise her and her boyfriend. Them, a home invasion thriller written and directed by Xavier Palud and David Moreau, takes its genre and strips it back to the bare essentials. Running at less than 80 minutes, it is a short, sharp, and panicky excursion into horror technique.

The characters are only defined in the broadest of terms. Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) teaches French language in a Romanian school, while Lucas (Michaël Cohen) stays at home as he writes his novel. Home, in their case, is a huge and rundown gated mansion set out in the middle of nowhere. How they came to live in such a house goes unexplained, as does the reason for their relocation to Romania. The reason for their ordeal is also unknown: Clementine simply hears suspicious sounds in the middle of the night and the film busks from there.

Them is very much a case of making a ‘film as calling card’. The flimsiest of storylines sets up Palud and Moreau to demonstrate a master class in ominous noises, jump scares, and sudden moments of violence. It must be said that they are very good at the entire range of horror movie techniques, and their efforts were indeed rewarded with an offer to helm the American remake of Danny and Oxide Pang’s The Eye two years later. For the viewer, the results of their efforts are a fast-paced and broadly speaking very effective set of scenes as Clementine and Lucas attempt to escape the intruders and the labyrinthine house. What it lacks in depth and texture it gains in momentum. Accepted for what it is (and, critically, what it is not), and viewers should find it a rock-solid amusement park of a movie.

It’s not perfect. Indeed there is a huge issue with the film’s Romanian setting, which posits its French protagonists as civilised and relatable while transforming their assailants – whoever they may be – as “the other”, seemingly barbaric and inhuman. Even assuming the rather distasteful representation is unintentional, it is quite difficult to work out an innocent reason for why Them‘s foreign setting is what it is. It brings to mind memories of James Watkins’ risible 2008 thriller Eden Lake, which does the same sort of crass demonization of poor people.

Them is sometimes filed alongside other francophone film productions in a movement called ‘the New French Extremity’, which generally feature transgressive presentations of sexual activity and/or violence. It is easy to see why: Them‘s release came amidst a mini-renaissance of fairly challenging French language horror films, and on a superficial level it is easy to list it among them. The bottom line, however, is that Them trades enthusiastically in jumps and scares. When lined up against the likes of Inside (2007) or Martyrs (2008), there really isn’t too much of a clear comparison – for which a lot of less hardened viewers will be grateful.

Them is coming to Australia in a new bluray edition from Umbrella Entertainment, scheduled for 20 March 2024. For more information click here.