There is a thing about foreign horror films that intrigues me. They tend to take a different perspective than American horror films.They are also much more violent than American horror movies. We don’t like the violence as much as other countries do. Regarding the blood, guts, and gore. “O.T.H.E.R.” is a French horror film, it doesn’t go to the lengths Korean horror films go.They are intense. This movie premiered in France back in July, but it’s finally coming out on Shudder and the states this coming week. 

Alice (Olga Kieralanko) is a successful woman who lives with her boyfriend Charlie (Phillup Shurer). When she gets a phone giving her the tragic news of her mother’s passing, she decides to go back home to take care of her family business. When she arrives at her childhood home, she notices nothing has changed except for one thing. There is a high-tech surveillance system at the house. This system keeps track of her every move and watches outside the home. While there, she starts to uncover a secret from her past that her mother kept from her. And a sinister presence lurking around the grounds of the home.

Olga Kieralanko has been around for years doing all kinds of films and television shows. Mostly, it is a period piece film, action films, and some comedies. She’s not as big a star as some of her competitors in the acting game, but she’s been in some big franchises like the MCU and the Bond Franchise. Here, she stars in a psychological horror film. She is basically on screen for the entire runtime of the film. She carries this story. I genuinely was interested in finding out what she found out in the context of the story. Her journey throughout the story fascinated me. I hope to see her in more stuff in the near future. She deserves better projects than she’s been getting in recent years.

There is a lot going on in this story once the main character gets to the house in the woods. There is a creepy critter lurking around , there is a girl who gets involved in the main character’s business, and there is a subplot involving lost memory and an overbearing mother involving pageants. As the main character explores her old childhood home, she starts to uncover her past. By watching vhs tapes, she found a secret room. All the little things that pop up in this movie start to add up to a crazy ending. The story as a whole is a bit unbelievable, but that is what horror films are about sometimes. They don’t always make sense.

There is a bit of comedy in this story. The creature seems a bit weird, and some of the decisions the main character makes don’t necessarily make sense. There is an aspect of wearing masks because the creature rips people’s faces off for some reason. That is explained in the end, but I still don’t believe that it made any sense in the story. I think this movie throws a lot against the wall to see what sticks. Some of it does, and other aspects don’t. It’s a bit of a mixed bag. I was on board with most of it, though. 

“O.T.H.ER” is a psychological horror film that has an interesting premise. It has a lot of creepy vibes. The subplot and cold opening were fascinating aspects of the story. The performance by Kieralanko was decent. The story itself was a bit all over the place, though. There was a creepy critter skulking around this house and a girl with a mask. All of it added up in the end, but I wasn’t blown away by any of it. Most of it was just meh for me. Foreign films have a certain quality that American films don’t have, but it doesn’t mean they’re always better than ours either. This one was fine, not as great as I hoped it would be.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen