The Crimson Rivers

Gloriously gothic and generously shot through with moments of pure grande guignol, The Crimson Rivers is a hugely stylish, if gruesome French police thriller made very much under the same sign as David Fincher’s Se7en.

Pierre Niemans (Reno) is a celebrated – or rather, notorious – Parisian vice cop who is called into the remote university town of Guernon in the French Alps, when the body of a young librarian is found wedged in a remote crevice with his hands hacked off and his eyes gouged out. In a matter of days, a similarly disfigured corpse is found, and it becomes clear that a particularly sick individual is on the loose. Add to this an already creepy setting where the geographical isolation has resulted in generations of inbred mountain folk, and one has an already disquieting criminal investigation.

However, three hundred kilometres away, former car-thief-turned rookie cop Max Kerkerian (Cassel) is investigating a desecrated graveyard at Sarzac, and in particular the grave of a young girl who disappeared twenty years ago. When Kerkerian’s subsequent investigation leads him to Neimans’ case, it becomes clear that these horrific crimes mask an even more disturbing truth.

Though The Crimson Rivers occasionally resorts to employing well-worn generic cliches (such as the hardboiled and well-seasoned older cop unwillingly having to pool resources with a defiant young pup) its onslaught of relentless melodrama lends the film an undeniable depth and an epic sweep. Right from the word go – an opening sequence which sees maggots merrily munching on a wound – it’s an unashamedly gothic trip to hell and back, replete with underground caverns, crazed nuns, nazis, terrifying glaciers, forensic atrocities and animal experiments, which all transpire to be linked by the film’s chilling denouement.

The Crimson Rivers is hokum, but it’s fantastically entertaining hokum nonetheless, with Reno and Cassel making for an entertaining central pairing, and Kassovitz’ direction providing much in the way of spooky atmospherics. The parade of mutilation on offer may well prove too much for the squeamish, but this complex murder-mystery is almost unmissable just the same.