THE SOUL EATER (2024 - French)

Studio:   Dark Sky Films
Director: Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo
Writer:   Annelyse Batrel, Ludovic Lefebvre
Producer: Fabrice Lambot, Pierre-Marcel Blanchot, Leo Maidenberg, David Layani
Stars:    Virginie Ledoyen, Paul Hamy, Francis Renaud, Malik Zidi, Cameron Bain, Lya Lessert, Sandrine Bonnaire

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two rival detectives come together to investigate a string of murders and missing children in a small French town connected to a disturbing urban legend.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Posing as Captain Franck de Roland of France’s National Gendarmerie, a man hitchhikes to the small mountain town of Roquenoir to investigate a series of missing children. Initially unaware of her identity, Franck ends up getting a ride from Commander Elisabeth Guardiano, who has been sent by France’s National Police to investigate a grisly double homicide in Roquenoir. Frank learns who Elisabeth is when their shared destination turns out to be connected to both of their cases.

Elisabeth and Franck meet Sergeant Marcelin and Officer Fabrice Gonnet of the local police as they search a house where Laurent Vasseur and his wife violently murdered each other with knives. Elisabeth finds the couple’s 12-year-old son Evan hiding in the basement. Evan cryptically claims “The Soul Eater” killed his parents. Franck pockets a wooden carving of a horned figure. Meanwhile, a man on a motorcycle observes from a distance.

During a meeting with Roquenoir mayor Pascale Minot the next day, Elisabeth insults the officers for not finding Evan. In discussing how her quiet town is dying, Mayor Minot mentions a nearby plane crash that received widespread attention.

After psychiatrist Doctor Carole Marbas refuses to let him question the recovering boy, Franck sneaks in to see Evan Vasseur in the hospital. Franck shows Evan photos of six missing children. Evan claims the Soul Eater killed them. Evan then has a vision of the mythical monster that only he sees.

Coroner Valentine Schwarz informs Elisabeth that the Vasseurs seemingly stabbed each other to death dozens of times, which shouldn’t have been physically possible. The coroner also indicates the Vasseurs strangely orgasmed during their deaths.

Franck returns to the crime scene to question the Vasseurs’ next-door neighbor Nina. Nina mentions that the family was strange, Evan often talked to himself, and she believes they were responsible for killing her missing dog. An altercation with Nina’s aggressive husband Arnaud ends Franck’s questioning.

Elisabeth finds Franck reexamining the Vasseurs’ house. Having previously told Franck she wants him gone so she can investigate her case alone, Franck contends he is only interested in the missing children, not the murders, and he believes the Vasseurs may have been kidnappers due to a van they had that matched a suspicious vehicle. Back in the basement, the two of them find evidence that Evan was forced to live down there as part of ongoing abuse. Elisabeth and Franck notice a computer was taken from the house. They also find Nina’s dead dog wrapped in plastic out in the yard.

Sergeant Marcelin summons Elisabeth and Franck to a sawmill where its owner, Yannick Drocourt, was found brutally murdered. Elisabeth finds another carved figurine at the scene. The investigators briefly speak with Henri Maublanc, an emotionally distraught client who supposedly came to the mill for a pickup and found Drocourt slaughtered. The investigators also discover another computer is missing from Drocourt’s office.

Unable to find any information on the internet, Elisabeth asks Sergeant Marcelin about the Soul Eater, which Marcelin identifies as a local legend used to keep kids out of the mountain forests. Marcelin explains their boogeyman could supposedly swallow souls, and it would replace a victim with a demonic doppelganger that wreaked havoc upon returning home. Elisabeth asks if the carved figurines could be the Soul Eater, but Marcelin claims the creature can take different forms.

Franck chases a man fleeing the mill. The man gets away, but he drops a laptop. Franck later forwards the hard drive’s contents to his friend Benjamin Cortes of the National Gendarmerie.

Elisabeth and Franck discuss the crimes over dinner. Elisabeth reveals her bullied daughter committed suicide, and she blames herself for not paying closer attention. Franck connects that event to Marcelin previously telling him Elisabeth was recently released from the hospital following her own suicide attempt.

Elisabeth and Franck realize Henri Maublanc lied after they note a discrepancy in his report of Drocourt’s death. Elisabeth and Franck drive to Henri’s house where they find him shortly after he murdered his devoutly religious wife Maryse with an ax during a fit of savage rage. Henri nearly kills Franck too, but Elisabeth shoots Henri dead. Elisabeth finds another carved figurine among Soul Eater-related drawings and texts belonging to the Maublancs’ daughter Jeanne. Officer Gonnet claims he confiscated the couple’s computer. Meanwhile, someone abducts Jeanne Maublanc as she hides outside. The man on the motorcycle again observes from a distance.

Someone in a Soul Eater mask is shown leading Evan Vasseur out of the hospital. The next day, Elisabeth and Franck discuss Evan’s disappearance with Doctor Carole Marbas, who reveals she works as a child psychiatrist for the local school in addition to the hospital. Carole says claims of Evan’s abuse could not be corroborated, but she believes he became fascinated with the Soul Eater legend to avoid facing reality. Carole also reveals Jeanne Maublanc and Evan went to the same school.

On their way to the school, the man on the motorcycle shoots at Elisabeth and Franck. Elisabeth intentionally crashes her car into the biker, knocking herself unconscious in the crash. Franck chases the injured man and eventually confronts him in a forest. The man confesses he has nothing to do with the missing children. Rather, he was collecting parcels of a synthetic drug capable of causing intense hallucinations that were secretly dropped in the recent plane crash. The biker dies.

Benjamin Cortes calls to tell Franck the recovered hard drive files led him to a site on the dark web for child pornography and torture, and Laurent Vasseur, Yannick Drocourt, and Henri Maublanc were all identified as admins. The information also pointed to an address for an abandoned sanitarium. Cortes advises their case has become so serious, they should no longer investigate solo, but Franck disregards Cortes’ insistence on getting his department involved.

Elisabeth, who had been recovering in the hospital after the crash, insists on accompanying Franck to the sanitarium. There, they find Officer Gonnet, who tries capturing Elisabeth until she shoots him dead.

Using a key taken off of Gonnet’s neck, Franck and Elisabeth unlock a room containing occult costumes and production equipment for torture and child pornography conducted by Laurent Vasseur, Yannick Drocourt, Henri Maublanc, Fabrice Gonnert, and an unidentified fifth person. Franck realizes Gonnert was the man he pursued from the sawmill.

Franck and Elisabeth find Evan Vasseur and Jeanne Maublanc chained to a wall. The children claim the Soul Eater possessed their parents, forcing them to do terrible things to Evan and Jeanne. When the two of them no longer seemed like enough, the adults began kidnapping other children. Evan and Jeanne eventually found the synthetic drug. After testing it on the neighbor’s dog, they used the drug to poison the adults, which made them go mad and kill each other.

Elisabeth calls Sergeant Marcelin to request backup. Marcelin tells Elisabeth that Franck’s car was traced to Benjamin Cortes, and no one named Franck de Roland actually exists.

Elisabeth tries pulling her gun on Franck, but Franck locks her in the room with Evan and Jeanne. Shortly afterward, Franck is captured by a woman wearing the Soul Eater mask.

After getting out of the room along with the children, Elisabeth finds the masked woman holding Franck at gunpoint. Franck confesses he had been searching for his kidnapped son all along.

Elisabeth and Franck ultimately subdue the woman and unmask her as Doctor Carole Marbas. Defiantly unrepentant, Carole taunts Franck by showing him a video of his son’s torture. She also shows Franck and Elisabeth the crematorium where the kidnapped children were killed. Elisabeth talks Franck out of shooting Carole, but Evan and Jeanne force the drug into her mouth. Franck leaves Carole with a pocketknife she uses to violently kill herself once her hallucinations begin. Franck locks Carole in the crematorium and sets fire to the building.

Elisabeth exits the sanitarium with Evan and Jeanne. Franck hands his gun to Elisabeth, who then asks Franck who he really is. Franck replies, “a ghost,” and walks off alone.

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Review:

Curiously, no one can find any information on the internet about “The Soul Eater,” the titular creature, not the film itself. That’s because this particular boogeyman is exclusive to Roquenoir, an ordinarily quiet little town slowly dying on a forested French mountainside, where only locals know its legend. According to the movie’s lore, after the Soul Eater does what its name says, the mythical monster replaces victims who dare to disturb it with demonic doppelgangers that then return home to commit unspeakable acts.

Unspeakable acts have drawn two different investigators to the town, which used to be described as “sleepy” until a recent rash of violent events, and one weirdly persistent plane crash, woke everyone up. Captain Franck de Roland of France’s National Gendarmerie came to investigate a string of missing children. Commander Elisabeth Guardiano of the National Police was summoned by the double homicide of two parents who savagely stabbed each other to death. Franck’s kidnappings and Elisabeth’s murders have one thing in common. Claims concerning the Soul Eater hang over all of the crimes, connecting to disappearances as far back as six months, and continuing to haunt grisly slayings yet to come.

Based on the novel “Le Mangeur d’Ames” by Alexis Laipsker, “The Soul Eater” probably works better as a book since it’s not quite the movie seemingly sold by the art or the pedigree of its directors, genre veterans Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo. The original one-sheet depicts a horned figure in a burlap hood looming ominously over a clouded mountain setting. The figure returns for the home video cover, albeit from behind and in smaller silhouette, to lead a child by the hand into a red-colored forest. Maury and Bustillo, meanwhile, are widely regarded for their high-tension, often graphically gruesome horror films like “Inside” (review here), “Livide” (review here), and “Leatherface” (review here).

Roped together, the impression offered above suggests one thing. That’s just not necessarily the thing “The Soul Eater” actually is.

You won’t get a great deal of action out of the movie. Structured as a police procedural, we arrive at each scene in “The Soul Eater” usually after blood has already been shed, leaving us to look at the gory aftermath without witnessing the animalistic behavior that brought us there. The film slips in a couple of foot chases, one of which includes a car crash as well as gunfire, on occasions implying the filmmakers sensed there weren’t enough organic thrills on the screen. Otherwise, expect extended sequences of questioning witnesses, collecting clues, conducting research, and coming to sudden conclusions at serendipitous moments.

What you will find is ample atmosphere. With scenery subdued by overcast skies, and forest floors covered in fallen leaves, there’s a distinctly crisp feeling of late autumn air throughout the movie. Coming up short of qualifying as overtly creepy, this mood nevertheless hangs a drape of pervasive sadness that appropriately complements the film’s darkly disturbing content.

Several people have likened “The Soul Eater” to “The Crimson Rivers” a.k.a. “Les Rivieres pourpres,” a psychological thriller from 2000 starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel. I’ve not seen that film, so I would instead say the American crime drama (based on a Danish TV series) “The Soul Eater” most reminds me of in terms of tone is “The Killing” with Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman. “The Soul Eater” and “The Killing” both take place in visually dour environments. Both feature a focused loner paired with a more maverick partner. They also involve mysterious murders and a community conspiracy, except “The Soul Eater” introduces an occult element similar to what the first season of “True Detective” did with its premise.

“The Soul Eater” gets bit by its plot’s design when it arrives at a sloppily staged ending where people are put in conspicuous positions to wait for conveniently timed moments and reveals. Prior to getting there, you’re likely to have deduced what’s going on since the story has too few characters and too long of a runtime to maintain before smoke inevitably starts fading away from the mirrors. Even without a fully satisfying sting or an unpredictable twist, “The Soul Eater” hits higher marks for gripping slow-burn suspense and character-driven intrigue.

Sensitive viewers should be cautioned that the film not only deals with child abductions and murder, but also with domestic violence, dark web torture porn, suicide, and even sexual arousal during death. Maury and Bustillo evidently aren’t shying away from the shocking subject matter that helped make their name. They’re just working with it in a different arena than full-blown horror now.

Review Score: 60

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