Cinematic Plagiarism!

OK, I watched The Strangers a couple weeks ago, and tonight I watched Ils, a French film with the English title Them. The premise of both of these films, without getting into spoilers yet, is that a couple in an isolated home are terrorized by anonymous strangers. Although IMDB FAQs say that The Strangers (2008) was NOT a remake of Ils (2006) and was written two years before the release of Ils, I cannot buy this. They are the same film. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Most of the tension in both is created by sounds. The antagonists are masked in TS and hooded in Ils. In Ils, the TV keeps coming back on. In TS, it's the record player. And while TS is longer and has a bit more superflous plot to it, you have to account for the fact that it is an Amerian film with a well-known actress (Liv Tyler), and we demand a longer running time than the 77-minute French film. Both claim to be inspired by true events, but one rings more true than the other. The DVD of TS says that the true event which inspired the film is: "based on a real event that occured during director Brian Bertino's childhood in which a stranger came to his home in the middle of the night asking several times for a person who did not exist. The following day, his family was informed by police that several houses had been ransacked and burglarized the previous night by an unknown assailant." I can see that inspiring a creative mind to a scary story. What if you were mangled rather than burgled? The fabricated ending of Ils says the couple was murdered by young teenagers just having a game basically. A Variety review at the time of the film's release says the "true event" which inspired the film was the murder of an Austrian couple by young teenagers in their isolated vacation home, though it fails to cite a source. Still, Variety is a reputable publication. I would tend to think that statement was fact-checked. And even if it isn't true, so what? TS is still a ripoff IMHMFO.

Though skepticism or cynicism are not my natural tendencies, this really pisses me off. I had no idea that the plot of Ils was the same as TS by reading the DVD box, but it was evident it was the same story very quickly. If I believe the Bertino story of the stranger knocking, I still can't see how he could use that as inspiration and write the basically identical screenplay and claim it is original. And how would a couple of young screenwriters in France know of some young screenwriter in Texas's screenplay to rip it off in time to have a completed and released film two years in advance? And how can we even know if it was written two years before? Because he says so? It doesn't wash. Probability and common sense say it was the other way around. The people who made The Ring gave no pretense that it wasn't a remake of a popular Japanese film, and it was well received. I don't know why this one would pretend, and I just can't buy it. I do realize that very little in the horror genre hasn't been regurgitated a million times, but c'mon. It's the same fucking movie.

If you care to watch either of these films, I recommend them for people who like scary. Both do the job of creating tension very well. But if you only want to watch one, guess which one I suggest? Ils dispenses with the final minutes of gore that TS cheapens itself with just a bit. It's not a ripoff that claims it isn't. And foreign films with subtitles make you feel worldly and sophisticated.