Deranged and sadistic psychopaths kidnapping randomly unfortunate travelers in remote areas with as sole purpose to humiliate, torture and eventually massacre them. There have been SO many movies with this exact same plot outline over the past five-ten years that it has almost become a sub-genre on its own; a hybrid between hillbilly-horror and torture-porn. The only more thing directors of these films can do to distinguish their effort from the others is being as creative and extreme as possible in drawing the characters of the psychopaths. The crazier, blood-thirstier and more perverted, the better. Olivier Abbou clearly understood that message, as the villains in his film "Territories" are uncannily straight-faced and nihilistic killers who recreated their very own and private mini-version of Guantanamo Bay in a deep-hidden forestry region on the Canadian border with America. Dressed as border patrol officers, the two apprehend a car full of twenty-something Americans returning home from a wedding. Okay, they have a broken headlight and were carrying a small dose of soft drugs, but the main reason they stopped the car is because the driver of the group is called Jalil El-Haddad. The fake officers accuse Jalil of terrorism and before they properly realize, the entire group is locked up in separate cages in the middle of the woods. Although well-made and occasionally very atmospheric, "Territories" inevitably remains a derivative and forgettable effort. The first half of the film is admirably tense and contains a number of unsettling shock-moments (the interrogations with the prisoners who are weakening physically as well as mentally), but still you can't escape the impression you have all seen this a dozen of times before. Then, rather incomprehensibly, the tone swifts during the third act with the introduction of a completely new protagonist. A hired private detective is on the lookout for the missing tourists and all of a sudden the plot exclusively follows him around, even to restaurants where he seduces waitresses and his motel room where he stuffs up his veins with heroin. He confronts the kidnappers a couple of times, but the victims and their continuously deteriorating conditions suddenly don't seem all that important anymore. The acting performances are more than decent and the filming locations are very effective, but the main impression raised by "Territories" is déjà-vu.
Review of Territories
