Ogre (2021)

The film follows the story of Chloé and her eight-year-old son, Jules, who is deaf. Fleeing a difficult past, they decide to settle in the village of Saint-Martin, which is looking for a schoolteacher. The village seems peaceful, but its forest is home to a wild beast that the farmers complain about. They say it kills calves and guts them, but leaves them otherwise intact, without eating any of the flesh. On their first evening, Chloé is listening to music and smoking when she hears a noise outside. Frightened, she goes back inside and slams the conservatory door shut, cutting her hand. The next day, she goes to see the doctor, Mr. Mathieu, a reserved and charismatic man, and falls for him. The feeling is mutual, and Mathieu spends a lot of time at the house with Jules and his mother, even though he knows that Jules deeply hates him. At the bar, Jules reads a notice about the disappearance of an eight-year-old boy named Jeremy. A few days later, when Jeremy’s body is found drowned in the lake, Jules begins to suspect that Mathieu is the monster, because when Mathieu cleans his mouth at night, he picks at his teeth, growls, and spits out red liquid. One stormy day, after seeing his mother in Mathieu’s arms the night before, Jules gets angry and leaves early in the morning. His mother and Mathieu search everywhere that morning, until Mathieu thinks to look in Jules’s room. There he finds a drawing on the mirror showing that Jules has gone to the lake where Jeremy’s body was found. Mathieu runs there and confronts Jules, who responds by throwing his oar into the water. Enraged, Mathieu swims to the boat, but Jules knocks him out with stones and swims home. He ends up in bed with a fever. A few minutes later, Mathieu returns with a cut above his eyebrow and explains to Chloé why Jules did it. She decides to talk to Jules, who confesses that at night he sees a meat-eater chewing in his ears, that Jeremy was the first target and he will be the second, and that Mathieu turns into a monster at night. Chloé comes out crying and tells Mathieu that Jules is asleep. Mathieu kisses her and goes home. She lies down beside her son and falls asleep next to him. The following afternoon, they are invited to a neighborhood party, and Jules tells his mother he doesn’t want to go. She tells him they have to go and act like normal people because some people think they are strange. Chloé goes to talk with the villagers, while Jules finds Alice, a girl from his class. She asks the face painter if she can paint Jules’s face. They sit down, and Mathieu arrives, forcing Alice to hide under the table. He sets a plate of meat in front of Jules and tells him they need to talk. Jules refuses, and Mathieu leaves the plate in front of him as he walks away. Shortly afterward, Chloé is seen dancing with one of the hunters. Mathieu arrives and drives the hunter away, and he leaves angrily. Mathieu begins to waltz with Chloé, who doesn’t notice that a group of children have chased Jules and Alice. They threaten to kill Jules unless he goes into the forest. He goes, despite Alice’s protests. A little later, when the dancing ends, Chloé looks for her son so they can go home, but can’t find him. She panics, then sees Alice coming back from the forest and learns that Jules went in there. Chloé screams her son’s name in the forest, but Jules, having switched off his hearing aid, can’t hear her. He is chased by the monster and manages to evade it several times, but realizes he can’t shake it and has to face it. He climbs onto a rock facing the monster and raises his hands to the sky to summon his bird friends, who obey him. Then he thrusts his right and left hands forward, sending the birds with them, until they pierce the monster and kill it. He then looks for his mother and finds her asleep at the foot of a tree. She embraces him, and they set off for the village. The film ends with Jules going to find Alice and taking her hand, while Chloé watches them with a smile…