Répertoire des villes disparues/ Ghost Town Anthology (2019)

A while ago - October 21, 2020, to be precise - I posted a blog entry about an interesting French-Canadian movie that I had seen. It was called Répertoire des villes disparues, or Ghost Town Anthology in the English translation.  

However, it is a difficult movie to find. It was not on any streaming services that I could find, and was even difficult to find a physical copy of when I checked on Amazon and Ebay. So, I kind of just shrugged and was thankful to have stumbled upon it, quite by accident, when it came on about a year and a half ago now. 

Well, I just happened to see that somebody put it up on Youtube. So if you were and/or are interested in seeing this movie, now you can do it.  

Also, I am adding my original blog entry review of the movie. 

That said, I realized upon watching this movie a second time, that apparently, I had missed a lot of the movie he first time around. Perhaps it had been so engaging that this reality was something that I missed initially. It was a strange, yet compelling movie, and it was haunting enough to capture my imagination. In my search for the movie, or at least scenes from the movie, I had indeed stumbled on the opening scene which I will not elaborate on here, since it would give away too much. But let’s just say that it involves a car accident. At the time, I had mistakenly believed that this was the main thing that I had missed. 

Turns out, it was not. There are some important things, including themes, established early, particularly in terms of this taking place in a small town. It feels like there is a certain suspicion and animosity among the people of this small community towards anything that is considered outside, particularly the big city. This is something universal, which we see in the present day political divide in the United States, as well as a number of other countries. It was the same in the past, such as books like “Village of Cannibals” (a history book, not some kind of horror book or anything) that documents much of the animosity and suspicion which seemed to prevail among rural French people shortly after the downfall of Napoleon III in the late 1800’s. 

 

Everything and everyone in the movie takes place in the fictional town of Sainte-Irénée-les-Neiges. That is not insignificant. There are small town mindsets and prejudices clearly at work here. After seeing this for a second time (and fully for a first time, admittedly), I now feel that this movie feels more like a statement on rural versus city life or mindset. Quebec City and Montreal are apparently considered safe havens, with no sightings of the dead. Oh, and this story felt much more inspired by zombies than I had originally understood upon first viewing, although these people are not exactly typical zombies, either. This is not - I repeat, NOT - just another mindless zombie movie. 

In the IMDB page, it stated that the writers are Denis Côté and Laurence Olivier, and that this is "loosely based on novel by" presumably Olivier. Might try and seek that book, if I can find a copy. Definitely was exactly what you would want from an adult horror movie. There are not so much any real jump scares, yet a definite sense that something is more assuredly wrong throughout, from beginning to end. 

All of this made more sense with a second viewing.  

Enjoy!

 

Below is a republishing of my original blog entry review on the movie, when I thought (mistakenly) that I had seen much of the movie, and gotten the gist of it. There was far more that I missed upon that first viewing than I had assumed. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, that I had missed less than I actually had, and that seeing a few clips of a minute or so gave me the sense of having seen the movie in it's entirety.  But I stand corrected. Nevertheless, it seemed worth posting the original blog entry from October of 2020 here and now:

So, I was at home doing some cleaning and organizing recently. Often times, when I do this, it feels better to turn the television on, almost like it offers some company. Every now and again, something good will come on, and capture my attention.  

This is what happened this time around. I was watching one of the French language movie channels (Super Ecran), and found this weird Québécois movie. Through the first few minutes, I could not tell if it was a drama, or a horror movie, or something else. In fact, it seemed at first to be just a series of strange scenes with no obvious relation to one another. A distinctive looking woman (she reminded me a bit of Wendy in The Shining) was talking to a couple, but I was not yet really paying attention.  

Before long, they showed some weird scenes, with people just standing outside in the cold and staring at people. Some guys appeared to be breaking into a home and tearing it apart, but then they were trying to sleep in there. And there was a guy who just parked his car on the side of a field, got out (leaving his car door wide open in the obviously frigid winter weather) and walked into the woods, struggling and then having what seemed like a breakdown.  

This is around the point where I really began to pay attention. And the movie started to get really good, quite intriguing. In truth, it was a combination of things, including the shots, which had a very bleak, colorless feel to them. And the music accompanying the scenes, which were haunting and intense. The build-up was fantastic, and before long, I had pretty much forgotten about the cleaning that I had been doing.  

It is an eerie movie, clearly with a limited budget, that nonetheless thrives on the mood, the feel, the atmosphere, that the movie nonetheless successfully creates. Again, the colorless shots and the dramatic, eerie music really enhanced this. Despite this story clearly taking place in the middle of a brutal Québec winter, it felt quite fitting to be watching it around Halloween time.  

This movie is not your typical horror movie. It does not rely on jump scares or gore. Instead, it relies on the feeling that there is something seriously, terribly wrong, but you cannot quite put your finger on what exactly it is. Some of the scenes of the people simply staring felt reminiscent of Michael Myers in the first Halloween, much like the feeling of something unsettling dominating the mood felt reminiscent of The Shining.  

It comes recommended, because once I began to fully pay attention to the movie, it really captivated me. That, despite having missed the beginning of the movie (a car accident where one of the locals in this small Québéc town gets killed is the trigger event, if you will). I began to regret having missed the earlier part of the movie, but have not found it online yet, although truth me, I will keep trying.  

Nevertheless, I recommend it, but with this warning: it does not follow the normal rules of horror film. You will not get a scantily clad, big breasted woman being chased by some monster or psycho killer. You will not get blood and gore. There really are no jump scares, or even single, iconic moments or images when everything wrong comes into focus. You will not even get some evil genius delighting in tormenting helpless victims. What you get instead is a statement on the brutality of loneliness and isolation, in a movie that makes you ask questions. There are some real surprises, too, although I did not want to mention it for fear of spoiling it for anyone who may read this review and is interested in seeing the film, but has not done so yet.  

That said, it should also be noted that not all questions are answered. Again, in the interest of not spoiling it, I am not mentioning how it ends, or what questions have not been answered. But if the movie thrives on the mysterious and the unexplained, then suffice to say that much of this remains unexplained even by the time the end credits appear. If there was a criticism of the movie from my end (and I kind of like movies that make you wonder, and do not answer all of your questions), then that would be it.  

Again, this is a relatively low-budget movie, and if you are looking for screams and chases and blood and guts, this movie is not for you. This is not Scream, or Halloween, or Friday the 13th, let alone some of the more recent horror movies. There is only one scene from the parts that I saw where one woman screams and runs away from something, and even this is not done in a typical style for a horror movie.  A solid movie overall, and it should be a statement on how impressed I was with this movie that I will indeed be looking to find it again on the internet if possible, or keeping my eye open for it to be broadcast again. 

A solid movie overall!

Highly recommended!