HUMAINS

AVEC BEAUCOUP DES .... OH, YOU KNOW HOW IT GOES

The joys of yet another brand new genre DVD, in which more French wandering around in the woods pursued by grunting subhumans and meeting sticky ends on sharp things. Mercifully, this time it's not the traditional bunch of clueless sex-obsessed teens traditional in the generic variations on the Texas Chainsaw theme, but a trio of anthropologists and a vacationing family stranded in a remote Swiss ravine after a car accident. What could be pursuing them and bloodily offing them? And why?

It's the Humains - something close to humans, but not quite. Some sort of Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal or similar Early Man might have lived somewhere in Switzerland much more recently than generally accepted, and so an old prof (Phillippe Nahon) and his son team up with the son's anthropologist semi-girlfriend to find proof and thus rewrite evolutionary history. Except that "more recently than generally accepted" can be more accurately expressed as "still alive and not happy". No sooner have our intrepid heroes hooked up with a family on an ill-advised hiking holiday (led by Dominique Pinon) than spooky things start happening - and then it's blood, screaming and death all the way with the hotties locked up in the Neanderthals' lair and the surviving blokes trying to rescue them. Can they get any help in the nearest village? Or do the locals have some dark secret to protect at all costs?

There are a few nice bits, some satisfyingly nasty violence, but generally it's not very original and ends up as not much better than okay. It's alright, nothing special but watchable, and it's not so much a case of there being so many better films on the shelves, as there being rather a lot that are pretty much the same. I saw this before High Lane [Vertige] and while watching the latter was rather reminded of this one, but nonetheless did enjoy it. But can we stop endlessly running around in the woods, please?

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