Blood, sex, violence, taboo, arthouse cinema and an alarming number of decisions nobody should make after midnight.
There are horror movies that make you jump.
There are horror movies that make you scream.
And then there are movies that make you sit in silence after the credits, staring at the television while your brain quietly asks, “Why the hell did we just watch that?”
Welcome to the New French Extremity.
Emerging around the turn of the 21st century, the New French Extremity became one of the most provocative currents in contemporary French cinema. Its films could be brutal, sexually explicit, psychologically disturbing, nihilistic, philosophical, grotesque, beautiful, repulsive—or several of those things simultaneously.
And sometimes all before breakfast.
The term was coined by critic James Quandt in 2004 to describe a loose group of French filmmakers whose work pushed sex, violence and transgression into territory more commonly associated with exploitation cinema, horror and pornography. Importantly, these filmmakers weren't necessarily making horror movies. Some were making arthouse dramas, erotic films or philosophical explorations of the human condition that simply happened to contain material capable of making a hardened horror fan reconsider their life choices.
The result was something difficult to categorize.
And therefore, naturally, extremely interesting.
This is your guide to the New French Extremity.
