Sightlines · reception

How Them was received

2006 · Xavier Palud · Them on Sightlines

The arc

A modest French sleeper in 2006, praised as lean and nasty; its stock has only risen since, with horror fans now treating it as one of the great stripped-down home-invasion movies — 77 minutes, no fat.

What’s debated

The eternal fight: did The Strangers (2008) lift its whole premise from Ils, and is the original still the better, scarier film? Horror Twitter relitigates this constantly.

Its footprint

It's the film people invoke whenever home-invasion horror comes up — the shorthand for 'the French one that did it first and did it in under 80 minutes,' and its 'based on true events' framing is part of the lore fans love to pick apart.

Where it stands

A cult touchstone of 2000s French horror — a 'you must have seen this' deep cut Letterboxd horror lists reach for alongside the New French Extremity wave, despite being far more restrained than its peers.

Did you know? The film's success landed co-directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud the Hollywood gig of directing the 2008 remake of The Eye with Jessica Alba — and fans have long noted that no verified real-life case matching the film's 'based on true events' claim has ever been produced.