Movie review: "Cache"

This is a French thriller about a fancypants Parisian couple who start receiving mysterious video tapes in the mail - surveillance videos of their house, hours long, which arrive at their doorstep with crude, sinister drawings and no other explanations. Wound deep within the marrow-like cells of the videotapes are secrets - old, sinister secrets of Le Husband's past, which unlock a frenzy of violence, horror, mediocre parenting, and pretension. Snappy publications I usually trust all rave about this movie as being chilling, exciting, unexpected, gripping, and spine-tingling.

But L and I actually saw this movie the other day, and all I know is, "Cache" is apparently French for "Don't bother." It was horrible. Boring. There was no music in the film and the characters were unsympathetic. There were scenes of really shocking violence: a boy cutting off a chicken's head, and the body careening around the barnyard (which you know they could not film in the US, thanks to our paint-bucket-toting friends at PETA) and a man slitting his own throat on screen. I was fortunate to look away in time to avoid seeing the actual act, but I can tell you that I have never heard a theatre audience make the kind of noise that they made when they saw him kill himself- shock, anguish, confusion.

So basically the movie was incredibly boring and dull, punctuated by horrific violence. There was no real resolution to the story and most questions were left unanswered. The only neat trick was that as a viewer, you were never sure if you were watching the movie or a surveillance tape. But even dipping into the lives of these upper-crusty Parisians - their meals, conversations, homes - did not make up for the wretchedness of the flick. In sum: Don't waste your time.