Written and directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. Starring James Jagger, Camilla Rowe and Eric Savin.
Plot: two YouTubers travel to France, dive into a remote lake and discover a submerged house perfectly preserved with all it’s nightmarish secrets intact.
**Sorry this review is so long, but I have a lot to say.** Ben (Jagger) and Tina (Rowe), a young couple, are traveling through Europe, taking video of reportedly haunted places for their YouTube channel. It’s more Ben’s thing than Tina’s, but she usually goes along with him even though he pranks and scares her, much to her chagrin. So, it’s not too surprising that he talks her into going to a supposedly isolated and haunted lake in France. When they arrive, the lake is very crowded actually and Ben is disappointed. Then, he meets a local named Pierre (Savin). Pierre informs them of and is all too happy to show them a real isolated lake with a perfectly preserved house beneath the surface. Ben is thrilled, Tina follows, they jump in the lake with a limited amount of oxygen and head to the bottom. Ben thinks the house they find submerged in the lake is his ticket to YouTube stardom, but Tina is hesitant. She doesn’t like the house, almost immediately, but when Ben says “one more room” several times, she just keeps going with him. If it’s not obvious by now, Ben’s a tool and we hated him. He only cares about himself and his views, not giving a shit about Tina’s feelings. In saying that though, we didn’t like Tina either. She isn’t happy with Ben because he doesn’t listen to her, but she stays with him anyway doing all his stupid ass shit.
And now, to ruin the whole thing. Keep reading if you want the whole horrible plot revealed so that you don’t have to sit through what we did.
******SPOILER ALERT******
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A series of eerie things begin to happen before the worst of it comes. For one thing, the drone they have flying through the house ahead of them picks up movement in one of the rooms, but Ben and Tina see nothing. Then, Ben does see something – a human silhouette behind a sheet – but when he pulls it back, nothing’s there. They also hear a piano playing in a room nearby, but no one is there either. They find scratches on the back of the front door as though someone was trying to get out and couldn’t. And finally, there’s the pictures. Dozens of pictures, all of missing children, are found hanging around the house. They wonder what kind of person would collect something so disturbing, but Ben convinces Tina to go through “one more room”.
This last room is pretty normal except for the giant crucifix on the wall that they discover is actually blocking a door to yet another room. Suddenly (but not so suddenly really), Ben wants to go in there, too, and Tina HELPS HIM move the crucifix out of the way. What? Why? Uh! Anyway, inside this final room, they find the corpses of two older people chained to the floor, with torture mask things on their faces. Below them, there’s a strange symbol drawn that Ben mistakenly calls a pentagram, which it isn’t. Get your facts straight. Like, now you’re not only sucking at movie making, but you can’t accurately fact check? Uh, again!
The rest of the movie goes surprisingly fast, but that’s not really a good thing. Ben and Tina, having seen dead people, are now officially ready to leave the house. In their attempt to leave, they discover that the window they came through is now bricked up and they can’t get out. Ben tries to calm Tina down, who is rightfully freaked out, but then she sees this ghost-like girl coming at them. However, Ben doesn’t see her at all. They search all the other rooms for ways out and wind up back in the corpse room, which is when Tina is attacked by the two corpses, who aren’t so dead after all. Of course, Ben doesn’t see this either. He just sees Tina flip out. Trying to prove that they are in fact dead, Ben removes the masks from their bodies and that’s when they come to life. The corpses begin chasing them through the house, which is when Ben and Tina find some old pictures on the wall and realize that the local, Pierre, is actually this crazy, corpse couple’s son. Should have seen that coming? What they also should have seen coming is how they inexplicably get separated. The male corpse comes after Tina, but she shakes him. When the female corpse goes after Ben, he isn’t so lucky.
When Tina finds Ben again, he’s not quite right. He’s talking, but he’s all monotone and nonsensical. He tells her that they’re good now, safe even. Then, the ghost girl appears and she and Ben show Tina a movie (I know it doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but I didn’t write it!), revealing that Pierre’s parents kidnapped and killed neighborhood children for Satanic purposes apparently and even got their own children involved. When the townspeople realized this was happening, they came for them, killing the mother, father and little girl, but Pierre managed to get away. Understanding – somehow – that Ben is possessed – somehow – Tina pleads with him. When he comes back to her, they attempt to swim away again, but the ghost girl, Pierre’s sister, Sarah, kills Ben, leaving Tina alone. At first, she crumbles, but she recovers quickly enough and manages to get to the only exit in sight. Once outside the house, she swims and swims for the surface, but her oxygen is pretty much gone by this point. Still, she can see the surface. She has to make it, right?! WRONG!!! She seriously and tormentingly drowns right below the surface. And if that’s not horrendous enough, there’s a post credits scene showing us that Pierre is bringing more people to the lake all the time, feeding them to his fucked up family. Uh.
While there was no point to any of this at all, we didn’t exactly give it a zero. Why? Well, there was a boob shot, some decent music played, the acting was excellent and it was even sort of uneasy at first, but the dullness soon took over. We got no pleasure from watching this. There were no real jump scares (which we happen to like), no blood, no Freddy Claws and no consistency. It is not rewatchable either as we’re sorry we watched it in the first place.
Our score: 22.
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