Ancient legends meet modern society in The Soul Eater, the latest twisty shocker from French filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo which was shown at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival. That juxtaposition of old and new makes The Soul Eater effective, but it’s the insane amount of damage, both physical and emotional, that makes the movie haunting.
Gendarmerie Captain Franck De Rolan (Paul Hamy) is obsessed. He’s been searching for a number of missing children and won’t stop until he finds them. He looks like hell. Bags rest under his eyes like abandoned luggage at a snowed-in airport. Commander Elisabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen) is equally focused. Uptight and abrasive, her lips constantly pursed, she’s on thin ice with the brass. Both De Rolan and Guardiano are called to the rural French town of Roquenoir. Guardiano is there to solve a bizarre double murder while De Rolan has reason to believe the town holds the key to the mystery of the disappearing kids.
De Rolan and Guardiano don’t like each other. In some ways, The Soul Eater is the anti-buddy cop movie. Both are compelled to work together when a local legend called the Soul Eater becomes the focal point of their separate investigations. According to the people of Roquenoir, the Soul Eater is a monster that lives in the forest. Wander too far into the woods alone and the Soul Eater devours your humanity and turns you into one of his own. You become a killing machine.
It doesn’t take long to realize that that Roquenoir was damaged before the double murder, before the arrival of De Rolan and Guardiano. The town is dying. People are moving away. There are only three officers on the police force. Decay is rapidly approaching Roquenoir, a place where the sun never seems to shine, an encampment on the edge of a cliff.
Guardiano and De Rolan are damaged as well. De Rolan doesn’t hesitate to break the rules, going so far as to sneak into a hospital room to interrogate a young boy who could be an eyewitness to a crime. Guardiano comes across as an ice queen, self-protective to a fault. She is so desperate to hide her inner anguish that she subconsciously telegraphs it. Everything and everyone in The Soul Eater is in quiet agony and that pain bleeds from the screen.
The Soul Eater is depicted as a tall horned creature with a skeletal face, an abstract rendition of Cernunnos, the Celtic Great Horned God of the wild. To that end, antlers are an important visual motif in The Soul Eater. They can be found in multiple locations throughout Roquenoir. At the scenes of the murders, of which there are several, small carved wooden statues of the Soul Eater are discovered. If one went by that alone, it would be easy to consider The Soul Eater a folk-horror movie.
Maury and Bustillo don’t let the viewer off the hook that easily. Despite the allusions to an arcane deity, The Soul Eater takes place in the present. There are cell phones. Airplanes. Computers. What the Soul Eater comes to symbolize in the here and now is a perverse evolution, bordering on heretical.
Fans of Maury and Bustillo who may be expecting fountains of grue to splatter the screen will be disappointed. The Soul Eater is somewhat restrained in the blood and guts department, although the bodily damage shown on screen is disturbing and cringeworthy. Although it deals with horrific themes, The Soul Eater isn’t a horror movie. It’s a grim police procedural following De Rolan and Guardiano to the dark heart of the mystery and further, into the personal hell of their hearts.
Ledoyen is the stiff backbone of The Soul Eater. Her stony performance allows the audience to wonder what is happening in Roquenoir without any emotional bias. Hamy’s performance is a weary slouch, his face like a punching bag left out in the rain. Every smile is forced and sardonic but every scream is tortured and real. If Ledoyen is the proper noun of The Soul Eater, then Hamy is the string of adjectives and obscenities.
The Soul Eater doesn’t fall apart in the third act, as many crime dramas do, but it doesn’t tie things up neatly. Some mysteries remain unsolved. Perhaps that’s for the best. While some horror fans may consider The Soul Eater a lateral move for Maury and Bustillo, the film allows the directing duo to dive deeply into a different genre while telling a gripping and compelling tale.
The Soul Eater isn’t a fluffy popcorn movie. It’s a story about hurt people hurting people who were already hurting. It’s about vengeance, and how that concept reaches back from the times of the avenging gods to the age of information. The Soul Eater may not be what viewers are expecting. It’s more, even if that realization doesn’t hit until long after the end credits roll.
The Soul Eater screened on Wednesday, July 24, at the 2024 Fantasia Festival in Montreal.
