Vamp or Not? La Meute

In English, the Pack, this was a French horror vehicle from 2010 that was directed by Franck Richard and whilst I had watched it some time ago, I had intended for some time to look at this under the lens of ‘Vamp or Not?’ A creature feature it is these very creatures that rang a vampire bell for me and made me want to examine the film. The film certainly plays with some tropes and yet it also has aspects of the zombie genre to it as well as other horror styles.

It begins with Charlotte Massot (Émilie Dequenne) driving across country at night, through to dawn’s early light. She stops for food at a roadside takeaway and is verbally accosted by a group of bikers. She avoids them and drives off but later sees them coming up the road towards her. Spotting a hitcher, Max (Benjamin Biolay), she picks him up as a deterrent to the bikers. They talk and then we see him driving as she sleeps – he checks her purse as she sleeps.

Max and Charlotte

He pulls into an area called La Spack, which contains a bar/café. In a moment of surrealness a person runs into a wall wearing bubble wrap as they go in. They chat, when the bikers come in and their leader threatens to rape her. Max intervenes and he is physically accosted for his trouble and becomes the focus of the suggested rape when the owner, credited as La Spack (Yolande Moreau), intervenes – aiming a gun at the bikers who leave.

Philippe Nahon as Chinaski

Max goes to the toilet. He seems to have been a while and Charlotte asks a guy who comes out whether he has seen Max – the answer is negative. She goes in to try and find him but he’s not there. She does notice a false wall but can’t get through it. She leaves and speaks to retired cop Chinaski (Philippe Nahon), who happens to be there. He tells her that picking up hitchhikers isn’t safe but takes her contact number and name.

Benjamin Biolay as Max

Charlotte hangs around until La Spack leaves and breaks in. She gets the false wall open with a crowbar and finds Max’s bandana, when La Spack returns and knocks her out. She awakens in a cage, next to a terrified young man in cowboy gear who repeatedly says “John Wayne”. Max appears and it becomes clear that he is La Spack’s son. Slop is spooned into the cage – not tasty but rich in iron, she is told.

the chair

At this point the film flips to a woman in peril type film, with Charlotte branded and eventually taken to the chair – a device where she and her fellow captive are strapped in, force fed the slop and have their blood extracted. We see La Spack cutting up body parts and throwing them in acid. This section of the film then moves to a point where Charlotte and the other captive are taken to a mining shack by Max and La Spack. Both are hung by the arm and her foot is cut so she will bleed onto the earth.

shower in blood

Out of the ground come the creatures. Called golems in the credits, we never establish exactly what they are. They emerge from the earth and shuffle like zombies but also use tools. They are blind and come out at night and their power waxes and wanes with the moon. They are described as coming deep from the earth and we hear that La Spack lost her other sons in the (now closed) mine. They wear human clothes but do not seems to be the sons returned, though one allows her to pet it. They are clearly drawn to blood, snuffling at blood in the soil and drinking the blood La Spack extracted from her victims from a container. One pulls the arm off the male captive and stands, being showered under the wound. Though we get one moment of flesh eating later the whole focus seems to be blood.

out of the earth

Indeed, we later see one rip out a heart and then drink from it, rather than eat it. We hear that they are born of mud (much like a golem) and the blood of the dead but also hear that the earth wants blood – so they might be a manifestation of a vampiric landscape. They do not attack Charlotte on the first night (despite her blood being the lure that dripped into the soil) and she is later told that there is no rhyme or reason to who they chose to attack. Later we see that there are many of these things and I have to admit that they reminded me of the vampires in Priest , which came out a year later.

the pack

So, ‘Vamp?’ Well they have the blood drinking, that’s for sure and they are hardy. They are also super strong (ripping an arm clean off is no mean feat). They are shambling, offering a zombie aspect, but they are also tied into a lunar cycle, reminiscent of early vampire tropes. I’m tempted to see them as avatars of a vampiric landscape and I do think we can go Vamp on this one – recognising the use of vampire tropes.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK