Movie Review – 5150 rue des ormes

5150 ELM’S WAY is located at the end of a quiet street in a small town. When Yannick (Marc-André Grondin) fell off his bike he hurt himself rather badly.  After hobbling for ages he found the door of the Beaulieu residence,5150 rue des Ormes (5150 Elm’s Way), the name of the show as it goes. I tell you since the iconic, fear inspiring boogeyman Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm’s Street, any movie starting with the word Elm’s spells horror if you ask me! Anyway, Yannick asks if he could clean the blood off his hands which turns out to be the biggest mistake of his life.

Beaulieu is a righteous psychopath and fanatic chess player who wants to rid the world of evil. And even though Ian has done nothing wrong, he is beaten, tortured and tormented before Beaulieu makes him an offer –  win at chess and he is free to go. And so now Ian has to play the game of his life, where he either loses his mind or will win back his life forever.

Photo via philcine dot yolasite dot com

What we found weird about the show:

M. Beaulieu locks Yannick in a room and that is when things get completely surreal. Firstly, everyone in the Beaulieu family go around acting as if it’s totally normal that dad has just gone and kidnapped a young man and has periodic conversations and chess games with him.

The daughter, Michelle (Mylène St-Sauveur) is just as sick as her father and keeps whacking the living daylights out of Yannick. At this point, I lose all respect for Yannick as he gets repeatedly beaten up by a chick! Also, one more jarring point – there is a real “Misery” (Stephen King) connection when the family, 1. breaksYannick’s legs,  2. when you see the mother Sonia Vachon (Jacques’s wife Maude), is the splitting image of Misery’s Kathy Bates! I sense some copycat going on here .. just a tad?

What we liked about the show:

Like the fantastic Patrick Senécal novel it’s based on, the film 5150, rue des Ormes is a gripping, ultra-creepy thriller and it’s one of the darker mainstream Québécois movies that has been screened. Not a bad show at all and it is sick enough to make you hair stand on end but not in a blood splattering sort of way. It’s more of a quite horror.

We liked the surrealistic chess scenes that occurred on a higher level of consciousness between the two main characters. That bit was pretty cool. We also liked the unusual storyline on how this nut-job who is obsessed with the notion of life as a struggle between the forces of good and evil sees himself as a “samaritan”. He somehow comes up with the sick notion that the good guys have to kidnap and dispose of evil, in their quest for justice and that salvation can be settled over a board-game. Now that my friend is pretty horrific.

Anyway, what we liked most about the movie was the fact that it was not your average horror.. Still, die hard horror buffs might really get a kick out of this subliminally twisted flick.