When
a child goes missing, it means all hands on deck for a provincial French police
force. That just leaves two junior detectives to work a quickly developing
serial killer case. Potentially, they could prevent dozens, maybe hundreds of
future missing persons. It all seems like a dangerous misallocation of
manpower, but this is France. Remember, they never did catch the Pink Panther.
Whether they can stop the shadowy killer seen in tape after tape of found
footage is a more pressing question in Nathan Ambrosioni’s Therapy (trailer
here),
which screened during the 2016 Fantasia International Film Festival.
A
box of tapes is found in an abandoned building near popular a camping site.
Normally that would not be so remarkable, but the blood splatterings give them
a sense of urgency. As the crime lab converts the various formats (VHS, Go-Pro,
16mm) onto flash-drives, two detectives watch the horror develop. Stephanie,
her slightly domineering boyfriend Steven, and three teen relations planned a
relaxing weekend getaway, but as Seb, the poorly socialized film student
documents, the frequent sound of distant screams quickly casts a pall on the
evening. They really should have left when someone breaks into Steven’s car,
but instead he waits until the a.m. hours to investigate the sinister squat
nearby. That would be the one that was once an insane asylum.
It
is tempting to get pedantic over the found footage (why is CSI splicing it
together in chronological order and how would they even know it in the first place),
but watching it from the helpless perspective of coppers Jane and Simon is
pretty creepy. As in his breakout debut Hostile,
Ambrosioni, the French horror prodigy, still displays a commanding mastery of
mood and tension, but Therapy is a
much more conventional and slashery follow-up.
Even
though he plays it fast and loose with the found footage conceit, it is still a
tough film for thesps to register in. Nevertheless, Nathalie Couturier is quite
compelling as the driven Jane. Likewise, Shelly Ward keeps us thoroughly off
balance as Abigail Parker, “the witness with a secret.” As part of Ambrosioni’s
repertory company, she is becoming quite the cult horror star. Fittingly,
Ambrosioni plays Seb—mostly heard rather than seen.
