Modern day Horror Masters Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury are back at it again with another chilling feature, here to ruin your day and make your skin crawl. Entitled, The Soul Eater, this new venture from France’s most frightening duo investigates the disappearance of a several children and a small forest town’s relation to a disturbing boogeymen legend. In line with Bustillo & Maury’s reputation for NSFL moments of Horror The Soul Eater is a punch in the gut, and a montage of violent, nightmare imagery filtered through the tropes and traits of a cop procedural.
Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury are two of my favorite horror filmmakers working today, always pushing themselves to do something different and show horror fans something they haven’t seen before. Audiences around the world couldn’t look away at the extremity on display in their debut feature Inside (2007) and their particular brand of darkness has guided them through vampire stories, slasher flicks, and even a turn found footage with a remarkable movie set entirely underwater. Their previous project Kandisha (2021) saw the pair taking on a Candyman-esque Boogeyman legend (featuring some INCREDIBLE practical effects) and The Soul Eater feels like a natural progression into a dark underworld where logic and reason are overtaken by fear and mystery.Â
“A dark underworld where logic and reason are overtaken by fear and mystery.”
In classic buddy cop fashion, detectives Franck De Rolan (Paul Hamy, Sibyl) and Elisabeth Guardiano (Virgine Ledoyen, The Beach) want nothing to do with each other. Elisabeth is a homicide investigator and Franck’s area of expertise is missing children but they’re forced to combine efforts after a double homicide in a dying French town leads them both down a rabbit hole looking for answers. Far from a regular 9-5 office job, they are both haunted by their work, but their drive to find whoever (or whatever) is responsible for a rash of missing children (and a growing numbers of gruesome deaths) forces them to investigate the history of an ethereal figure known as The Soul Eater.
Cops have been interrogating the paranormal as far back as Sherlock Holmes and The Soul Eater is as indebted to those classic Arthur Conon Doyle stories as it is to True Detective. When the truth becomes so horrible and unimaginable, you’re only recourse to look for answers in the supernatural, no matter what toll it takes on your psyche. And there’s nothing better than watching cops slowly succumb to the fear of a boogeyman, because it forces them to throw their training aside and tap into their primal instincts for survival, and justice.
“Another Grade A Horror story from Bustillo & Maury […] that feels more like True Crime than a supernatural slasher.”
The Soul Eater is another Grade A Horror story from Bustillo & Maury who have always been more interested in the horrors of the real world than the paranormal. Their violence (although regularly BRUTAL) is a shade more realistic than your average filmmaker. They relish in making you squirm but The Soul Eater feels more like True Crime than a supernatural slasher. When someone is stabbed, it’s as graphic and gory as a medical textbook, and they wield that power for maximum effect. Riding passenger with detectives we arrive at crimes that have already taken place, and how the camera explores the aftermath of a murder is often the horror of it all.
The mystery of The Soul Eater is its best kept secret. We all know going in that we’re in for a wild ride, just given the creators involved, but the 8-foot-tall horned monster here to guide children away into the afterlife is an unknown quantity. Rest assured, if you’re coming looking for that patented disregard for subject matter that can be discussed in polite circle, these filmmakers gotchu. The Soul Eater is pound-for-pound the cop procedural it is riffing on, for better or worse. But I think Longlegs has taught us all that cop procedurals can still be haunting, hopeless, and full of killer nightmare imagery- qualities that are an absolute guarantee with storytellers like Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury.
Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury’s The Soul Eater celebrated its North American Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival and will eventually be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Click HERE to follow our continued coverage of the festival and let us know if you’re excited to see Bustillo & Maury’s newest feature over in the Nightmare on Film Street Discord!
