Without resorting to chainsaw maniacs and rotting zombies, French films have recently found other, more personal ways to scare audiences. Winner of the Palme d'Or in 2021, Titane, a body horror movie (a genre showcasing transgressive disturbances in the human body) by Julia Ducournau, featured a serial killer... pregnant with a Cadillac. In 2023, the future-facing environmental fable The Animal Kingdom, by Thomas Cailley, spread a virus capable of turning humans into animals. Just a year ago, Infested, by Sébastien Vanicek, dumped a huge quantity of spiders into the circle-shaped buildings of a public housing project. Inspired by the likes of David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma and Quentin Tarantino, these hybrid films have all far exceeded the glass ceiling of 150,000 admissions.

While the wave of "French scaries" of the 2000s – High Tension, 2003, Inside, 2007, Frontiers, 2008)– quickly ran out of steam, the current thrill seems set to last. Just take a look at the release schedule to be convinced: On Wednesday, November 27, there is Emma Benestan's fantasy western Animale; on December 11, Noémie Merlant's Almodovian horror-comedy The Balconettes; and, on December 25, Aude Léa Rapin's futuristic film Planet B. "These days, there are enough successes to compensate for failures and move forward. Cartesian by nature, the French language is no longer a repellent to audiences," said producer Thierry Lounas (Capricci), also founder of Sofilm cinema magazine.

For almost 10 years, the Sofilm de Genre residencies, in partnership with the Grand-Est region (which launched the Frissons en Grand Est ("Thrills in Grand Est") label), have enabled successful candidates to work on the visual and musical universe of their projects with scriptwriters, composers and VFX ("visual effects") supervisors. The most successful projects are presented to key financial backers: Canal+ (which already contributed to the emergence of French scaries), Arte and distributor Goodfellas (formerly Wild Bunch International).

"Horror cinema can no longer be the demon that runs away down the hall. It must speak to the major issues of the world, which is a genre film every three months by itself," noted Lounas. Former residents Just Philippot (The Swarm), a rural drama stretched into the dimensions of a macabre, fantastical tale, and Acide (Acid), a climate catastrophe film) and Stéphan Castang (Vincent Must Die, a remote-working survival film) have a very French way of sprinkling socio-economic reality with fantasy.

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