The Soul Eater movie storyline. Commander Élisabeth Guardiano is tasked with investigating a double murder of rare brutality in a small town in the Vosges. There, she meets gendarmerie captain Franck de Rolan who is facing a series of disappearances of children. Powerless in the face of a hostile village, they will be forced to join forces to discover the truth, a terrifying truth steeped in occult legends.
The Soul Eater (French: Le Mangeur d’Âmes) is a French horror thriller film directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury and starring Virginie Ledoyen, Paul Hamy, Sandrine Bonnaire, Francis Renaud, Malik Zidi, Cameron Bain, Lya Oussadit-Lessert, Chloé Coulloud, Elisabeth Duda, Maxime Nieto and Wendy Grenier. The screenplay was written by Annelyse Batrel and Ludovic Lefebvre.
Film Review for The Soul Eater
In France, good thrillers are rare. Due to lack of means and talent. Successes in cinema can indeed be counted on the fingers of one hand (come on, two, at most). And most of the time, our filmmakers are incapable of competing with infinitely better American films (The Silence of the Lambs, Seven or Zodiac remain unsurpassable).
So why redo, thirty years late, what has already been done elsewhere, better? However, our directors rub shoulders with the genre. And usually break their teeth. There has been a succession of disasters in France for decades. But we persist in wanting to measure ourselves against American (or even Scandinavian – remember the wave of Nordic thrillers launched by the Swedish series Millénium fifteen years ago) thrillers.
Luckily, the thriller is also a literary genre which is very successful in our country. Brilliant French authors like Bernard Minier, Michel Bussi, Maxime Chattam, Jean-Christophe Grangé, Franck Thilliez and Olivier Norek have written detective novels which have won over the public.
The experienced Bustillo-Maury tandem
The Eater of Souls, which is released in theaters this Wednesday, is also the adaptation of a book by Alexis Laipsker, published in 2021 by Michel Lafon. Former journalist at Le Point, this great poker specialist has established himself as one of the sharpest pens in French crime fiction.
This is why his work quickly attracted the interest of French producers. And in particular Fabrice Lambot, co-founder of the independent company Phase 4 Productions, which acquired the rights to this bestseller. And proposed to the tandem Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury to produce a film adaptation.
For seventeen years, Bustillo and Maury have been working in horror cinema. In 2007, their first feature film, Inside, had the effect of a small bomb. Selected at the Cannes Film Festival for Critics’ Week, this very gory film told the story of a crazy woman (Béatrice Dalle) who persecuted a young pregnant woman (Alysson Paradis, Vanessa’s sister) in order to snatch her baby!
Prohibited for children under 16, the film was disturbing with its extreme violence. Ten years later, the duo also had their first American experience by filming Leatherface (2017), a radical and nihilistic prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).
Shot in Bulgaria, this film with Stephen Dorff and Lili Taylor retraced in 1965 in Texas the origins and adolescence of the famous killer imagined by Tobe Hooper. Of rare cruelty, this eighth opus of the saga was received like an uppercut.
More recently, Bustillo and Maury also co-directed the very claustrophobic The Deep House (2021). The story of a young American couple who dove to the bottom of a lake and discovered the existence of a haunted house underwater (“Take a deep breath,” the poster recommended). A true technical feat, this film with its beautiful visual performance achieved great success with more than 200,000 admissions in French cinemas.
An ambiguous plot
In short, the pair has obviously been trying to get genre films moving in France for years. Full of good will, the Bustillo-Maurys are working hard to defend a cinema that still remains a minority in France. That of pure imagination. With their seventh feature film, The Soul Eater, these former journalists from Mad Movies magazine tackle for the first time a subject that is not at all fantastic. Even if they play with the ambiguity of the plot – we wonder throughout the film whether supernatural elements intervene in the story or not – we have to wait for the final twist to find out.
This Vosges thriller revolves around two police investigations which will soon cross paths. That of gendarmerie captain Franck de Rolan (Paul Hamy) who faces a series of disappearances of children in a small, uneventful mountain village. And the investigation of a police commander, Élisabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen), who discovered in the same commune in the Vosges a couple who killed each other in a pavilion with incredible brutality. Frank wonders who kidnapped the children. Élisabeth, for her part, seeks to understand the motive for the double homicide between this woman and her husband.
Since the construction of a highway near this remote town, Roquenoir has become a ghost town abandoned by tourists. And its inhabitants, rather wild, are not very cooperative with the police. Even downright hostile in some cases.
To complicate matters, an old legend from the region claims that a bogeyman, the “Eater of Souls”, would seize children after dark. A local belief that seems to terrify the population. Soon, our two police officers discover that their investigations are linked. And by force of circumstances, Franck and Élisabeth are forced to join forces and team up to discover the truth. Especially since the murders follow one another in this mountainside town…
Provincial nightmare
Partly financed by the Grand Est region, this film with a very small budget of around 3.5 million euros was shot in CinemaScope in superb natural settings and beautiful exteriors. We inevitably think of another mountainous thriller, Les Rivières pourpres (2000) by Mathieu Kassovitz, based on a novel by Jean-Christophe Grangé.
But the darkness of The Eater of Souls exceeds that of the “Kasso” film. The action takes place in particularly sinister locations (gloomy chalet, abandoned building, deserted hospital, disused sanatorium, etc.) which give the film a disturbing atmosphere on the edge of the fantastic. In addition, all the characters hide a dark secret. Paul Hamy, who we discovered and really liked in Elle s’en va (2013) by Emmanuelle Bercot where he played opposite Catherine Deneuve, here plays a cop with a troubled past.
A man haunted by trauma. With her deep voice, Virginie Ledoyen plays, for her part, a police officer who is not very pleasant at first glance. An authoritarian badass who rules men with an iron fist. Later, in a moving sequence, we discover that this woman has experienced a personal tragedy with the death of her daughter. A teenager she couldn’t save from suicide. We understand better, therefore, his hope of rescuing the children who have disappeared from this cursed city. There is also the doctor of a hospital, Carole Marbas (Sandrine Bonnaire), who helps the police in their investigation…
Visually polished, this local thriller also offers some action scenes, like this long chase between Franck and a mysterious suspect, which begins in a sawmill and ends on logs of wood. Or an altercation with an enigmatic biker whose face is hidden by a helmet. But that’s not what’s most interesting here.
The Soul Eater(2024)
Le Mangeur d’Âmes
Directed by: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury
Starring: Virginie Ledoyen, Paul Hamy, Sandrine Bonnaire, Francis Renaud, Malik Zidi, Cameron Bain, Lya Oussadit-Lessert, Chloé Coulloud, Elisabeth Duda, Maxime Nieto, Wendy Grenier
Screenplay by: Annelyse Batrel, Ludovic Lefebvre
Production Design by: Marc Thiébault
Cinematography by: Simon Roca
Film Editing by: Baxter
Costume Design by: Alice Eyssartier
Set Decoration by: Tony Andrasik
Art Direction by: Robin Chichoux, Robin Dervaux
Music by: Raphaël Gesqua
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Star Invest Films (France)
Release Date: April 24, 2024
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