Ils (2006)
Chosen by Lauren Parker because she wants to give me a heart attack and had this to say about it: 'I don't remember much about Them to be honest apart from its very creepy playing on the fact that even your home is not necessarily a safe haven, alot of bumps in the dark.'
Supposedly inspired by real events this is a rather effective little thriller for the most part. Taut (runs just over 70 mins), it plays well with the fear that even your home can be unsafe, your haven turned into something horrible and dangerous.
It loses a little edge when it leaves the house (whose geography is never quite laid out enough, it's massive but we see only a few rooms - and has an unsed attic bigger than my entire home) for some running around the woods and a telegraphed 'shock' (it tries to play coy about shooting the invaders in full perspective) but manages to be tense and uncomfortable in it's best moments, working the stalking cliches into a sort of grounded reality.
As with a lot of these films it has more than a whiff of middle class paranoia about it as a school teacher and a writer are stalked by hoodies in a massive country house.
Had a bit of a rummage, and some of the reviewers of this one say that rather than being a middle class - working class thing, it's more aboot a French fear of being overrun by the less cultured parts of Europe, specifically, Romanians. Apparently, the Romanian government banned birth control in order to bulk up the population, which resulted in a lot of wild street children, who the French have a paranoia about being stabbed by.
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