French filmmakers Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have made some excellent horror cinema in their native tongue. Both Inside and the more recent Kandisha have proved that the pair have keen and interesting voices, although their only attempt thus far at an English language movie, Leatherface, was somewhat of a mess. How much involvement they had in the inception of that Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel is unclear however, so I think a pass can be granted on that one. This makes their latest English movie, The Deep House, a clean slate and a fresh opportunity for them to prove that they can work outside of their own language.
In The Deep House, a young couple (Camille Rowe and James Jagger) who like to spend their time documenting old ruins and uploading the footage to their social media channels. With their latest location of interest taken over by tourists, the pair venture off the beaten track and decide on a deep dive into a relatively unexplored submerged ruin. Once below water, they find themselves at the mercy of the building’s original residents. Whereas Leatherface suffered from a bad premise and a weak reveal, The Deep House is afflicted by a language barrier. Bustillo and Maury wrote the screenplay, which was later translated into English by Julien David and Rachel Parker. The conversion from French into English seems to be missing some substance, resulting in stilted dialogue. So much of the script sounds lifted from a 1990s video game and it gets a little hard to watch without beginning to smirk. It’s especially dire during the exploration of items around the house. The words spoken at these points are exactly the kind of descriptive blurb that comes up when you investigate an item in an early Silent Hill game, which feels clunky and odd.
The story of the film plays as a concoction of The Haunting, 47 Metres Down, and The Ruins; it’s entertaining enough, it’s just lacking anything of substance to grasp onto. One point of passing interest is that, for once, the protagonists are not deliberately seeking out a place known to be haunted. This skirts the usual back and forth with one character being wary and superstitious, the other ignorant and dismissive. Both experience odd things here, but it’s more about how they deal with them and try to survive than arguments around “I told you we shouldn’t have come.”
A missed opportunity for two talented filmmakers to show their full potential, the transition into English language features once again eludes to Bustillo and Maury. The Deep House works on a superficial level of being a way to while away some time, but fails to dive much further than that.
The Deep House
Summary
Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have a great track record in French films, but their latest English language venture falls flat with the good stuff getting lost in translation.
The Deep House was reviewed at Grimmfest 2021.
