As a horror-centric publication, how do you follow up the month of October? It’s our Super Bowl, our Grand Prix! Curator of all things Horror Press, James-Micael Fleites had the best possible idea for the month of November: New French Extremity. New French Extremity has a few films that always come to mind when discussed with films like Martyrs, Frontier(s), and Haute Tension. But many great New French Extremity films don’t get the recognition they deserve–and the ones that don’t deserve it still need to be discussed.

The first one I think is necessary to discuss is one that teeters on the idea of horror: Demonlover.

Demonlover (2002) follows a French-based company, Volf Corporation, which is in the process of acquiring a Japanese animation studio. Diane (Connie Nielsen) is leading the acquisition after successful corporate espionage takes her boss Karen (Dominique Reymond) out of commission. Karen’s assistant, Elise Lipsky (Chloë Sevigny), vows to make sure Diane doesn’t have an easy go with any of this. Once Volf Corporation takes control of the Japanese anime studio, they try to set up a deal with an American distribution company called Demonlover, which is run by Elise Si Gibril (Gina Gershon). It soon comes to light that Demonlover is nothing more than a front for an extreme interactive torture website called the Hellfire Club. (If you thought reading that was tedious, you can only imagine how long it took me to write that.)

Let’s get the two positives out of the way first. At its soul, Demonlover tries to exist as a commentary on our extreme desensitization of violence in the modern age. Much of this desensitization started in the late ’60s when the Vietnam War was televised into people’s homes and furthered by Ted Turner’s obsession with money and the creation of the 24-hour news cycle. That was all the catalyst. When Al Gore invented the internet, that’s a joke, we had no clue just how awful the outcome would be. Demonlover’s commentary on violence in consumed media is important, but that’s really all it has going for it. Is that one piece of commentary worth an over two-hour-long student film? (More on that later.) There’s also the commentary on corporate espionage, but it falls flat compared to the rest of the film’s commentary.

The second, and final, positive aspect of Demonlover is the acting and specifically Connie Nielsen, Chloë Sevigny, and Gina Gershon. Simply put, they are bad bitches and I love them. The ‘extremity’ of this film (I watched the unrated director’s cut) wasn’t really anything to write home about, leaving the majority of carrying to these three women. It’s hard to say I didn’t like this film when the performances were as powerful as theirs were.

And that’s it. The film as a whole feels like a first-draft freshman film school drivel. It’s unfocused when it needs to be focused and focused when it doesn’t. The only other film I’ve seen by writer/director Olivier Assayas is his segment in Paris, Je T’aime so I can’t effectively comment on his overall style. But Demonlover feels like Assayas had an overall grand idea that became bogged down by personal preference, kinks, and an overinflated ego.

If I had a friend who said they wanted to watch a real art film, there is no way I would show them this. Because that’s all Demonlover is: an attempt to make an art film with some commentary. Assayas tries to assault your senses with sex, blood, and “authentic” violence but fails at nearly every aspect. Demonlover feels nothing more than self-masturbation; a film that proves he’s holier than thou. And let me tell you, he is far from that. At its core, Demonloveris a two-hour-long horror-adjacent exercise in futility.

From the moment Emma Benestan’s Animale begins, it is apparent that this is no ordinary fantasy horror movie. The film follows Nejma (Oulaya Amamra), a woman training for a bull racing competition. The sport is heavily male-dominated, so she is confronting the usual amount of sexism. She eventually perseveres and believes she is gaining the respect of the men on her team. She lets her guard down, and they get her drunk and take her to the middle of nowhere. Nejma blacks out and awakens with unexplainable wounds and bruises. The men she trusted make excuses, and she tries to shake off whatever transpired. However, the body keeps score. More importantly, not everything should be forgotten or forgiven. As Nejma begins to change and her memory of that night’s events starts to return, a string of gruesome murders begins to plague her town.

Animale really drives home how inhumanely bulls are treated in these sports and connects that thought to how men abuse women. However, it takes this thought further than we could have ever dreamed and gives us a werebull exacting revenge on rapists. This is such a wildly stunning take on something so traumatic that it elicits a whole wheelhouse of emotions as an audience member. Am I team werebull and happy we have a movie about femme rage? Absolutely. Do I think this is a powerful story? Of course. Am I tired of women characters getting assaulted in most of the media we get? One hundred percent. 

Emma Benestan and Julie Debiton’s script takes care not to glamorize assault and does not conflate rape with sex, which is where so many male filmmakers fail this assignment. The way the abuse is shot is not gratuitous and never lingers. I think Animale and Blink Twice are two of the best recent movies to deal with rape culture because they take care of the audience. They also understand people will pick up what has transpired without fifteen minutes of women being brutalized. Both films have faith in their actors and their scripts to convey a message free of the layer of film bro sleaze that we are typically subjected to when we watch rape-revenge films.

Oulaya Amamra’s performance as Nejma is endearing and heartbreaking. Nejma is looking for a place in the world as she seemingly has no family. Like many of us, she is in a male-dominated field and used to a certain level of misogyny, but is still trying to coexist with men who disrespect her because of her gender. So much so that she spends most of the movie trying to hold the truth about what happened to her at arms-length. Watching her figure out what the audience knew from the second the guys took her to a second location is reminiscent of Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You. It feels like being punched in the gut for the second time when she finally pieces it together. When the men who violated and gaslit her start dying grisly deaths, it is hard not to clap.

As the town begins to wonder what kind of animal is tearing apart their supposedly upstanding men, we get the surprise werebull. I love this werebull and am happy that some part of Nejma was able to exact revenge while the rest of her was still processing her trauma. This also ties together the mistreatment of animals and the mistreatment of women thread the movie has from the beginning. The majestic creatures, who she wanted to race alongside the men she thought were her friends, become the family she is in search of. They take her in as one of their own and protect her from those who would further harm her. Again, it feels weird to call this film beautiful, but it is too poignant to be called anything else.

Animale knows its audience well enough and eventually stops hinting at the werebull. The film gives us a full-on transformation as Nejma goes after the last man standing. This is terrifyingly effective and gives us just enough body horror to force us to lean even further in our seats. It is hard to not feel the bloodlust and root for her to tear him apart much like he did her. This is good for her horror at its most primal and feverish. The empathetic lens is ripped away as our plagued victim becomes a survivor and a full participant in making sure her rapist never harms anyone else. Where many movies claim they are celebrating feminine rage, Animale relishes in it. 

It cannot be stressed enough that Animale is possibly one of the best films to come out of this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. As a professionally petty person, I wish we had more movies that let women be angry without sexual assault being the trigger. However, Animale is one of the few to understand the assignment, so it is hard to be too mad at it. Plus, it gives us a werebull doing the good work, so it will forever live in my heart. 

Animale had its East Coast Premiere at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival on October 19th, 2024.