Cold Ground (2017)

The late 70s. A young couple working for French TV, reporter Melissa (Gala Besson) and cameraman David (Fabrice Pierre) – the film having rightly concluded that waving away the soundman typical for this set-up with a comment about a new-fangled camera with integrated sound gets rid of an unneeded character – come to a town at the French-Swiss border to report on a group of scientists investigating a local bout of cattle mutilation and cattle disappearances.

However, all contact to the scientists’ base on top of a rather inhospitable mountain has broken off a few days ago. Supposedly, there’s nothing to worry about (there is after all nothing dangerous on the mountain, right?). Probably, the radio’s just broken down because of the cold. Nobody really wants to wait for the next supply helicopter run to be sure, though, so Melissa and David are allowed the grand opportunity of a couple of days hiking up a frozen mountain for their interviews, accompanying a local guide, a US cop with his own interest in cattle mutilations (Doug Rand) and a biologist (Maura Tillay). Needless to say, things do not go well on their journey, and the material we see are the digitally cleaned remains of the footage found decades later.

For, yes, Fabien Delage’s Cold Ground is yet another found footage movie/POV horror film containing the last testament of some poor, doomed people. Note to self: never take a camera anywhere, and you will live longer.

Even though the film – unlike Delage’s earlier fake documentary La Rage du Démon - never quite leaves the traditional structures of the POV horror genre behind, it is, however, a worthwhile entry into it, presenting at least a couple of ideas of its own but predominantly recommending itself by going through some of the standard tropes in a thoughtful and convincing manner. Where quite a few POV horror films never really feel as if they have a professionally edited script to work from, Delage actually puts some more than decent work into things like pacing, as well as actually writing characters. These characters aren’t particularly deep, but the writing is deft enough to give the cast something to work with, in turn providing the audience with a stake in their (horrible) fate. And while we generally know how all of this ends, the film does put a lot of effort into getting there in ways that do go from one interesting, even exciting, incident to the next. One might think that’s the sort of thing every genre film aiming to grab its audience would do, but one would be terribly, fatally wrong.

I also found myself rather enjoying how Delage uses and plays with various classical Fortean tropes until the film finally reveals what kind of monster is actually going to murder its poor characters horribly. And yes, we do get a good look or three at the film’s monster, never so good a look that there’s any need to criticize design or effects quality, but enough we get a fine idea of what these things look like.

Cold Ground is a bit gorier than most POV horror films, too, clearly realizing that taking place in 1976 also puts a certain onus of mild ickiness on a film. It’s not gratuitous, mind you, rather the slightly unappetizing are there as often and as much as is needed for what the film is doing.

Speaking of 1976, the film’s fake 70s documentary look is very well realized too, the whole thing looking a lot like actual documentaries shot under difficult circumstances of its time. This is part of the film’s general air of veracity, where the international characters speak with the appropriate accents, wear the right fashions and haircuts, as well as have tastes in music which fit.


So, even though this is probably not going to shock those among my imaginary readers who just loathe all POV horror films into changing their minds, Cold Ground is a worthwhile film for those among us who do like the sub-genre or just well-made small horror movies.

In short: Fury of the Demon (2016)

Original title: La rage du Démon

This is another entry into the fake documentary arm of the POV horror subgenre. Fabien Delage’s film follows the traces of a curious incident: a couple of years ago, an American movie collector with a rather Poe-affine name showed a mysterious old silent movie called “La rage du Démon” to a select group of movie biz people. Somehow, the screening caused a minor riot, with several of its viewers still suffering from psychological aftereffects today. Rumours and suppositions suggest the very same film has caused comparable troubles at least two times before; other rumours and suppositions say it was directed by the father of at least the fantastic arm of cinema, the great Georges Méliès.

The documentary follows the film’s tracks through interviews with actual – mostly French – film critics, enthusiasts and directors. It turns out it may not have been made by Méliès at all, but by an occultist he shortly associated with, but what the film does, where it is now, and how it affects its viewers the way it does stays unclear.

If there’s an easier way to get me to like your film than by making it a documentary about a film that never actually existed, I don’t know what it is. Fury is a particularly great example of the fake documentary form in any case, always feeling as if it were shot about a real subject. The only thing – apart from the truth – standing between the film and complete authenticity is that not everyone Delage has roped into the project is a terribly great actor. But then, not everyone talking to the camera in real documentaries is a hundred percent convincing either.

Apart from the lovely idea, the film particularly recommends itself by the sure-handed way its history of the mystery film is constructed and talked about. Most of the tales about its subject the film digs out are very well integrated into actual film history – and into how much of the early history of the art is lost to us – so not little of what we hear in the interviews on screen would actually be the sort of thing we’d encounter in a documentary about a real lost film, adding a pleasant degree of plausibility to the fun, outré parts of the story.


It’s also quite a joy to watch how much some of the film people in front of the camera get into the whole thing – the late Jean-Jacques Bernard is particularly wonderful – going off into the somewhat starry eyed art talk that seems so typical of French film critics once they get going. There’s a joy of invention as well as a palpable love of film running through all of what Delage presents, so I can’t at all imagine anyone who loves movies as much as the people who made this not getting a bit of a kick out of Fury of the Demon.