The deep house

When discovering Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury's new film, we find ourselves in a genre film that is totally mastered and that does not hesitate to demonstrate brilliantly that to succeed in holding the audience's attention, we must not try to overwhelm it with an unconsidered abuse of gory scenes, but rather propose a real atmosphere. After Inside (2007), Livid (2011), Among the Living (2014), Leatherface (2017), the duo of writers and directors remain faithful to the horror genre while seeking new visual challenges and demonstrating originality. In this The deep house keeps all its promises and shows that it is possible to make excellent horror films in France capable of competing with American productions such as the films proposed by Blumhouse.

The influence of American cinema is clearly visible on the screen not only by the way of creating an anguishing universe by maximizing audacious shots as well as the introduction scene as well as the numerous underwater scenes. In the same way, it is impossible not to think of the books of H. P. Lovecraft (Cthulhu myth) and of John Carpenter and Clive Barker. These directors have managed to find their own style to give horror its letters of nobility.  The Deep house succeeds in the audacious challenge of reinventing the theme of haunted houses and reminding us that to scare the audience you have to show not only an undeniable talent, but also a mastery of a genre and above all break the codes to go beyond the framework of the simple B-movie. 

The deep house by its short duration succeeds however to tell us a fascinating story in which we follow a young American couple, Tina (Camille Rowe) and Ben (James Jagger) passionate about history and haunted houses. Their research brings them to France in search of an original place, an underwater house. Passionate about new technologies, they want their youtube channel to be successful and allow them to continue traveling and earning money. However, the underwater exploration will not go as planned and they will find themselves trapped in a haunted house where many young children have been kidnapped and given as offerings to evil forces. The deep house is not just another haunted house movie with its nightmarish visions, the directors draw up a portrait of a youth in loss of reference and too attached to new technologies. Tina and Ben use a drone to help the exploration of the house, music to enhance the quality of their underwater videos and forget that some elements of the past must remain buried forever.

Of course, The Deep House will not please everyone, as it does not aim at proposing a film too much anchored in predefined rails nor at wanting to go fast and show as much as possible. The directors and screenwriters Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury are well aware that they don't have the huge means to compete with Hollywood haunted house films, but they are smart enough to maximize the effectiveness of their film by transforming it into a real cinematographic and visual experience. Like the classics of the genre from the 70's and 80's, The deep house manages to really scare and startle us. The film relies mostly on the excellent performance of Camille Rowe (Rock'n'roll (2016), The Ideal (2016)) and James Jagger (Vinyl series (2016), J.T Leroy (2018)). Their duo works to perfection.

The deep house also manages not to fall into the trap of the Found footage film by making sure that the videos we see are the ones filmed. On the contrary, the film allows for a real deep immersion in which a simple scuba dive turns into a one-way trip to the middle of a marine hell. While French cinema hardly manages to surprise us with its academic way of approaching a story, The Deep house shows that some s<french directors are able to surprise us and impose themselves as true masters of horror. 

Finally, by a fortuitous chance we were able to discover the same week the new film by Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maur, Kandisha which was screened last October as part of the festival of Sitges. Our review will be online on July 19th. It will be available on the streaming platform Shudder on July 22 in the United States and Canada.

The deep house
Written and directed by Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury
Produced by Clément Miserez, Matthieu Warter, David Giordano
Starring Camille Rowe, James Jagger, Eric Savin
Music by Raphael Gesqua
Cinematography : Jacques Ballard
Edited by Baxter 
Production companies : Radar Films, Logical Pictures, Apollo Films, Forecast Pictures
Distributed by Apollo Films (France)
Release date : June 30, 2021 (France)
Running time : 81 minutes

Seen on July 02, 2021 at Gaumont Disney Village, Room 7 seat E25

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