Call this a consumer advisory. I stopped by the Blockbuster across the street from my apartment on Thursday night and rented the just-released DVD of French horror flick Inside. When it played at the Toronto fest last fall, Scott Weinberg raved about it, and I survived a memorable midnight screening at Fantastic Fest a couple of weeks later. As Scott said, it's well-crafted but incredibly brutal and violent. The Weinstein Co. picked it up and, as many of us suspected, a theatrical release was bypassed and it was sent directly to DVD, unrated, on their Dimension Extreme label. Scott's review was even quoted on the back of the box: "Unrelenting, brutal and stunningly violent."

Dimension Extreme has a "rental exclusive" deal with Blockbuster. I thought I'd save a few bucks by renting instead of buying. First problem: The rental version doesn't include the comprehensive 55-minute "making of" feature that a friend had recommended. Second (and even bigger) problem: the only version available at the store where I rented is the R-rated version, cut from 83 to 75 minutes.

In his review of Frontiere(s), our own Scott Weinberg wrote: "After Haute Tension hit the scene and caused a little bit of buzz (if very little attention from the U.S. box office), it only seemed to be a matter of time before a few new freaky French horror flicks would rear their unseemly heads." I haven't seen Frontiere(s), which was recently bumped from the HorrorFest lineup, but I saw the absolutely ferocious Inside (A l'interieur) at Fantastic Fest. You can read Scott's full review for his spot-on take; alternatively, you can read Harry Knowles' review at Ain't It Cool News, where I was mentioned, though not by name: "I saw many on my row hiding their eyes." Yup, I was one of the "many"!

More French horror is on the way. Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, has announced that it has acquired North American distribution rights to Eden Log, according to Variety. The premise is that "a man ... wakes up in total darkness at the bottom of a cave, unaware of how he got there. While pursued by a scary creature, the man tries to climb back to the Earth's surface through a cemetery-like maze abandoned by a mysterious corporation called Eden Log." Sounds like Resident Evil meets The Descent, doesn't it? But the French-language teaser looks sweet -- if, like me, you enjoy dark chocolate brought to a boil. "Bon voyage!"

Directed by Franck Vestiel, Eden Log is currently in post-production. The film is scheduled for release in France at Christmas with North American release following sometime in 2008. I can't wait to hide my eyes again.

[ Via Twitch ]

The ferocious French import known as both Ils and Them has no interest in slowing down or wandering around. It offers only the barest hints of character development and it doesn't have time to bother with subplots, red herrings or extraneous characters. It's just a stripped-to-the-bone stalker thriller in which two unfortunate souls spend one hellacious night trying to evade something extraordinarily murderous. (Or maybe someone, but I don't want to spoil the flick for you.)

The flicks opens with a fairly conventional stinger: a teenage girl and her mother run afoul of something deadly after suffering a nasty car accident. From there we meet a sweet-natured young teacher who's just about to head off and spend the weekend with her boyfriend in a rather isolated (and massive) house. And once the lights go out for the night, the action is just getting started.