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Rough, bleak and chilling France! Olivier Abbou is known for his 2010 exploitation film Territories and now he delivers a very decent thriller that in the last 20 minutes turns into proper horror. The film has a decent story about a couple who return home after a two month holiday only to find their house occupied by a couple of squatters who have no intention of leaving and the law plays in their favour. The leading couple slowly fall into despair. The idea of having to pay the mortgage but having to sleep in their car is not very appealing, and on top of that they meet the wrong people. This is exactly the France I missed. The scene at the disco is properly hallucinogenic and the final home invasion is so incredibly raw, uncomfortable and authentic that I was holding my breath like I haven't in a long time. Story***, Action***, Humor>No, Violence****, Entertainment****, Music***, Visuals****, Atmosphere****, Suspense****. 7.5/10. (02.05.2020)

The socio-legal conflict between two families results in a tenser drama than you would expect. However, the film reaches its well-thought-out climax somewhat spontaneously, without any build-up or logic, which makes it either improbable or told with insufficiently precise exposition (since it is a real story, the latter is more likely). (07.09.2020)

The premise is good, but it could have been great developed as an absurd Kafkaesque bureaucratic tragicomedy where a landlord tries in vain to get assistance from the state against two troublesome squatters until, in desperation he’s forced to take matters in his own hands. It would also have worked as a parable about how things would be like if the the state collapsed under excessive bureaucracy and people returned to the state before Locke’s Social contract, and had to protect their natural rights on their own. But, with a completely different group of actors taking the main roles, the film becomes nothing but brutal nonsense with extremely unlikeable characters. Whether it’s accurately or inaccurately based on real events, as the opening caption announces, I don’t care, the film needs a dramaturgical rework. (08.05.2020)

It is true that as a psychological thriller and subsequently a murderous horror with a touch of The Purge, it more or less works. If only the premise wasn’t so terribly stupid and didn’t go to such a brutal extreme. By which I mean a world where no one gives a damn about anything, laws (literally) do not exist and the fact that a guy with a pregnant girlfriend moves into your house is actually very welcome and doesn’t bother anyone. (05.05.2020)