It is a pity that the director Francis Leroy (Francis Leroi) will be remembered only for erotic films, as “Sex et perestroika” or a whole series of adventures and adventures to different places about Emmanuel, because he had an undeniable talent in the direction of the thriller, which belongs to the picture in question, shot at a decent level of his years, and now looks very intriguing.
Genre stories about the central character who arrived on a certain island are always especially curious due to the specifics of a detached little society forced to live by unwritten rules, necessarily, where something mysterious, creepy, forbidden for the rest of the world is happening. Here and here there is a female doctor who arrives, who begins her work, unexpectedly learning about a local colleague, whom the islanders dislike. Gossip, but usually groundless nothing exists between people, so psychological confrontation is inevitable, only and that’s not all – for unknown reasons, household appliances harm many residents. Accidents are too frequent to ignore a certain system in them, but just for everyday fiction is this: an electric knife without connecting to a socket will cut off your fingers, or, like a live doll will prick a point in the eye of a girl?
The doctor takes on his own investigation. She is not a policeman and no experience, but there is something more, additional to the vocation of her profession, mixed with the memory of the past family tragedy, as if freeing the island from misfortune, a woman will take the burden off her soul, parting with personal tragedy.
Playing this role, Anny Duperey managed to fully express the proper range of feelings, clearly transmitting it from the screen. Dramatic inserts do not spoil the main groundwork of the thriller, but refine it, filling it with depth, complication of the image, making a “live” character to whom you empathize. Such pictures always benefit the actor's return, where in a world full of suspense, there is a distinct hero. It is also necessary to note the screen clash of antagonistic doctors radically differing in moral and ethical principles, penetrating an impressive part of the timekeeping, revealing another interesting facet of the work.
Speaking of suspense, I want to praise the ability to show the sinister side in the most ordinary thing, and the one that is always with us in our homes from day to day falling under the arm, but not regarded as a mortal danger. All these spinning blades of mixers, gas cylinders, wall sconces over the bathtub with water, and even a framed photo that crashed against the floor, turned into sharp glasses - played perfectly in a single symphony of horror. Especially closer to the final denouement of the tape, the intensity increases, showing the hard confrontation of the main character with her own house and its decoration, “animated” telepathic abilities. At the same time, the film does not lose its sense of the permissible measure of fiction for the sake of maintaining an equivalent balance with the claim to reality that it even prescribes a deliberate villain - the same "demon" - in a double form, a frightened distant child who, being part of the experiment, does not have clear concepts of the constants "good" and "bad".
Well, in fact, in total, it turns out an interesting picture with a decent investment of the film crew in the final result, captivating the viewer further and further into solving the mystery of endless accidents on an island somewhere in the English Channel, to eventually become an intriguing thriller that does not let go of the screen for an hour and a half.
7 out of 10