The Ones Who Grieve (Les âmes en Peine) includes a few of my favorite horror things. A period setting. A plague that turns the sick into flesh eaters. New French Extremity tendencies. Unfortunately, the end result was less engaging than the sum of its parts.
Young Zélie (Zélie Rhixon) is trapped in the French countryside with her religious zealot father, Jacob (Thierry Frémont), against the backdrop of a plague that changes the infected into cannibals, sort of. And the “Black Veil” really is beside the point. The movie isn’t so much about the plague as it is Zelie’s traumatic relationship with Jacob.
Her supposedly devout father is a predator in every sense of the word (enter the New French Extremity comparisons). He is what’s called a “Masker,” responsible for pulling teeth and sewing shut the mouths and eyes of the infected. Ultimately setting them off into the wilderness wearing wooden masks to eventually die because “death is the order of things.” He treats Zélie and her binge-eating mother with the same level of cruelty. Zélie endures the torment because she loves her mother and knows that Jacob will find her if she flees, which would worsen an already horrendous situation.
Violence For Its Own Sake
Much of Jacob’s brutality is in full view on screen. But it feels like violence for its own sake because there really isn’t much else there. Zelie suffers one indignity after another, but lacks any other outward development or interiority. She barely musters a grimace for most of the nearly 2- hour runtime. Her entire personality is hating her father, who is written so comically evil that I was waiting for him to twirl his mustache like a stereotypical French villain. That didn’t happen, but he did call Zélie a “succubus” and the reason he will “go to Hell and sit at Satan’s right hand.” Daddy issues, am I right?
The most interesting subplot attempts to capture the struggle between religious zealotry and scientific invention, and the potential inhumanity of both. Unfortunately (for all of us), those themes take a backseat to cannibalism, sexual assault, and fatphobia. Director Quarxx was on the verge of something meaningful to say, but incest got in the way.
The Ones Who Grieve could best describe me as a viewer. As I watched a movie with an interesting premise, stylish period visuals, and callbacks to my favorite horror subgenre, I ended up mourning what could have been a far better movie had those involved used more care in the execution.
