WRITTEN BY FIONA FORTUNATO

September 29 at Christine’s Cinema Club in the sixth arrondissement of Paris, two graduates of ESRA (École Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle) premiered their first major short film together. YSÉ, written and directed by François-Xavier Besnier and Octave Chezeaud, is a short horror film that follows a pregnant couple on a weekend getaway trip into a secluded wooded area. They stay at bed-and-breakfast run by an older couple with a sinister motive for luring visitors to their dining room table. With blood soaked clothing, she pants as she runs through a forest shrouded in darkness. Does this plot sound familiar? It would appear that certain recurring themes in genres continually enthrall their respective audiences time and time again.

YSÉ was filmed primarily in the Le Mans region of France and was shot over 11 days. The project was entirely independent, with Besnier and Chezeaud co-writing the screenplay over a year and using crowd-funding along with their personal savings in order to finance their film.  Even with the logistical challenges of creating a film independently as two university students, they gathered a team of eager film lovers who were fellow students and friends to create their production team. 

In an interview with YSÉ’s writers and directors, they pointed to their main directorial sources of influence as directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, M. Night Shyamalan and Penelope Buitenhuis. Therefore it follows that their guiding inspiration in terms of plot comes from movies like Psycho, Get Out, The Visit, and Hidden Lake. The new generation of filmmakers does not have to reinvent the genre of horror in order to successfully infiltrate the film industry. This is not to say that just copying a well-known plot is enough, but with successful repurposing of the audience's favorite plot lines (while not being fully innovative), it is incredibly enjoyable for the viewer to watch and rewarding for the filmmaker to make. 

For example, a common style we see in horror cinema: the viewer becomes emotionally attached to the lone survivor, suspense builds and adrenaline rushes as they almost make it to the end of the film, this is the case of Hidden Lake and YSÉ. YSÉ combined the horror and desperation you would expect from a film whose premise is that an old couple lures unsuspecting guests to their home in order to eat them for dinner, however, there is an unexpected but appreciated balance of comedy along with the gore. [Spoiler] The initial couple does not survive to the end of the film, but directorial jokes poke fun at the couple’s unfortunate end. Accidentally mixed into the meal of the next batch of guests’ dinner, the new couple discovers a wedding ring in their plate of meat, leading to a momentary uncomfortable pause of silence followed by awkward laughter. The dramatic irony of the film continues to reveal itself in its final minutes, as the B&B owners reveal a new baby grandchild named Ysé, ironically sharing the same name as the unborn child of the original couple. 

The cast and crew of YSÉ brought their passion and creativity to the screen and reaffirmed why horror as a genre can be so fun to watch, combining humor with suspense and the grotesque. While some of the plot is derivative, audiences continue to love themes of struggle and survival even with its slight predictability. The premier was packed full of cinephiles of all ages, and additionally, in recent years the fanbase of young horror fans in France has begun to grow recently according to the film students present at the screening. As the genre of film evolves with the emergence of new talented filmmakers, it will be fascinating to see how themes that have become staples of the industry can break out of the mold while sticking within the genre, and expand into this new generation.