Nadine
might have a hard time recouping her deposit on the remote Belgian mansion she
rented for a drunken New Year’s blowout. As usual, it is always the blood
stains that are the hardest to get out. There will be a lot to clean up when a
psycho-killer starts stalking her guests in Tony T. Datis’s Le Manoir (trailer here), which screens
during the 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival.
Nadine
and Fabrice are definitely still together, but in the case of Stéphane and Sam,
it depends who you ask. He says they are just taking a break, but she says they
are totally over. That already makes things pretty awkward, but the night will
get much worse when someone starts knocking off the irresponsible partiers. Of
course, the heaping helpings of drugs served up by the hippyish Drazic will not
help much either, especially when he slips some Jim Morrison-strength mushroom
brownies to Sam’s shy cousin Charlotte.
Frankly,
there is even more attitude splattered over Le
Manoir than blood. While Datis (previously best-known for music videos)
helms the slasher business with a sure hand, the film is especially lethal when
skewering the clueless millennial mindset. It takes on semi-meta dimensions
when you take into the account most of the cast were YouTube “stars,” many whom
were making their proper acting debuts in Le
Manoir. However, they are totally watchable when bickering, bantering, and
getting gruesomely murdered. (As American comparisons, they are not as
charismatic as the stars of YouTube Red’s Single By 30, but they are vastly superior to the leads of The Thinning.)
Vanessa
Guide probably counts as the professional ringer in the ensemble, delivering
some truly outrageous lines with appropriate contempt for decorum as the sexually
“confident” Sam. Jérôme Niel doesn’t take any prisoners either as the abrasive
and possibly delusional Stéphane. However, Ludovik Day scores the most surprise
laughs as the not quite as nebbish as he looks Bruno, whereas Vincent Tirel’s
Drazic largely falls back on druggy-guru clichés.
