A small town nestled deep within Le Val Gernon evolves into a nexus for tragedy. Previously a popular tourist destination, the quaint French town of Roquenoir feels cursed after the crumbling of its local sanatorium, inviting a string of unexplained occurrences to follow. The news of a grisly tourist plane crash haunts the town’s proceedings, and the understaffed local police department does not bother to dig deeper into the steady disappearance of children in the area. It is only when a vehemently grim double murder intersects with the timely arrival of Commander Elisabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen) that Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo’s “The Soul Eater” lurches us toward a tense, slow-burn crime procedural tinged with the most spine-chilling brand of horror.
Those familiar with the filmmaking duo’s work must be aware of their singular treatment of the extreme horror genre, where offerings like “Livid” and “Inside” emerge as brutal, uncompromising snapshots that remain seared into one’s retina long after. Maury and Bustillo’s latest Fantasia horror-thriller does not lean outright into this telltale intensity: “The Soul Eater” takes a page out of labyrinthine crime procedurals that are infected with just the right amount of dread-inducing folk myths, where the delicious slow-burn is hijacked by flashes of frenzied horror that etch a compelling, disturbing pattern.
Guardiano’s arrival in Roquenoir is met with good old misogyny and a sense of xenophobic hostility — the townsfolk, including the mayor and the local police force, are wary of outsiders after the tourist business shut down and seem exasperated by Guardiano’s thorough detective work. The Commander’s arrival merges with Franck De Rolan (Paul Hamy), the Captain of the Gendarmerie, who is here to track down clues regarding the missing children. When both of them arrive at the double homicide crime scene, their paths converge time and again, pointing to the fact that these cases are inexplicably linked and are somehow tied to the shadow of a local bogeyman who swallows the souls of anyone who locks eyes with the creature.
Just when one would expect “The Soul Eater” to trudge the path of predictability, the narrative swerves into directions uncharted, dragging us along solitary trips to the dark forest and the warm interiors of lavish homes that soon become splattered with entrails and the murderous intentions of those inhabiting them. Franck and Elisabeth navigate these violent situations with a measured amount of empathetic investment and smart competence, but the truth slips away just at the brink of discovery, pushing the duo closer to the abyss of something deeply unsavory. The brand of evil that the film uncovers toward the end is much more frightening than any antlered creature from the beyond, as it pokes at one of the bleakest and most disgusting aspects of humanity and a truth that is a little too close for comfort.
These uncomfortable aspects work together to unsettle us as we dredge further into the investigation, with Raphael Gesqua’s cloying, claustrophobic score ramping up the dread. The Soul Eater myth works both on a tangible and metaphorical level, as the demons that pursue Franck and Elisabeth tint their approach to the case and expose what makes them tick. Both leads are fantastic, with Hamy leaning into a more tortured, despondent mold and Ledoyen commanding every scene she’s in with her blunt, methodical aura, which belies the layers of grief and desperation that drive her forward every day.
“The Soul Eater” lingers on the finer vignettes of cyclical trauma and the dark, messy fallout of these horrifying circumstances, etching a heartbreaking tragedy that might feel a bit too heavy for some to stomach, given that the film tackles these themes head-on. However, it is a frightening, captivating journey that does not sugarcoat bitter truths or rely upon cheap scares to rattle us from within — it etches a disturbing picture of true evil, which lingers out in the open undetected, pretending to assume a form that deceptively seems harmless and benign.
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