(rated R, 103 mins.) From its maggot infested brutal opening to its weird college in the French Alps amidst nowhere, the focus is two criminal investigators solving the vicious murder of the missing librarian found mutilated. These investigators (Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel) slowly unravel the small campus secrets dating back to a child’s death twenty years prior. The seemingly random events continue to connect, eventually leading the two detectives to each other at this incestuous college. Like “Seven” and “Silence of The Lambs” this story has its own set of twists involving DNA, eyeballs, and gruesome acts of humans as guinea pigs by a killer who can perfectly aim a trigger, climb glacial mountains and run a track like an Olympian sprinter. While the end is a bit over the top in coming to terms playfully trapped between icy heights and death’s door, the movie manages to clean up nicely, resolving with a twist, thus avoiding the avalanche I feared might overtake it. (French with Subtitles).
