This film was notable enough to attract the attention of international critics and it seems that the directorial duo of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo have established a reputation for themselves in the horror genre. That’s enough for me to give this a chance but I don’t think it was worth it. The plot hook of clueless youths breaking into a haunted house is standard and while there is some startling imagery and interesting backstory, it’s barely coherent. Worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be any larger theme and not much point to the film at all.

As part of her practical training, Lucy Klavel accompanies an older and more experienced nurse on her rounds to visit the elderly and the infirm in their own homes. The very last visit of the day is to an unconscious woman on life support, Mrs. Jessel, who lives in a large and ancient mansion. The older nurse explains that Mrs. Jessel was once a world famous ballet instructor and jokes that there is a rumor of treasure hidden in the mansion somewhere. That night Lucy goes to meet her boyfriend William who works on a fishing boat. When she mentions the treasure, he insists on breaking into the house together with her and his brother Ben to look for it. The trio bumble around until they find an open window leading into the basement. Inside they find dusty old furniture, creepy dolls and scary stuffed animals. Retrieving a key from around Mrs. Jessel’s neck, they unlock a door into a bizarre room featuring what at first looks like a mannequin of a young girl in a ballerina outfit. Lucy then realizes that it is an embalmed corpse with the eyes sewn shut and of course that is when the real horror starts.

The whole film is kind of a mess and there’s really no redeeming it. One of the strangest things to me was that it’s a French film and it’s set in what looks like a very picturesque French seaside town. Yet it’s also filled with odd Americanisms, like Halloween trick-or-treating, American names and characters and so on. It seems that this was originally meant to be an English-language production. So much of the film doesn’t make a lick of sense, such as why the comatose Mrs. Jessel seemingly lives by herself in her mansion and none of them think it’s strange at all or how dumb do they have to be to believe in rumors of hidden treasure in a creepy old mansion. There’s no attempt at worldbuilding, it might as well as be a succession of horror tropes thrown together randomly with nothing at all tying them together. There are what may or may not be vampires, mind transference, puppeteering mannequins. experiments gone wrong, and the mansion might possibly exist in some kind of nightmarish dimension. I think the directors meant for the theme to be horrific fairy tales or something but it’s nowhere coherent enough.

There are some nice ideas in here. A scene has one of the two boys losing consciousness and then waking up in a room with no doors or any other exits. It’s a very specific type of horror and confusion. It’s also funny how the boys keep trying to leave the house by forcing open doors and windows once the scary stuff happens. It’s ridiculous because the old wood shouldn’t stand up to a determined effort but whatever. But then when Lucy actually does make it out, she discovers that the world beyond the mansion has morphed beyond recognition. There’s no explanation at all for why this happens but it makes for a very definitive refusal that the house isn’t letting you go until it’s good and ready. The film very clearly wants to be scary and not funny so the random craziness is off-putting.

I never did watch the duo’s previous film Inside that made them famous and after seeing this wreck I’m not inclined to. They have technical skills, sure, as the film looks good on a scene-to-scene basis. But it just doesn’t add up anything worth your time.