Inhospitable landscapes: contemporary French horror cinema, immigration and identity

Abstract

The rebirth of French horror cinema at the start of the twenty-first century coincided with a critical moment in the country’s debates on immigration. The Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) called for cultural assimilation and integration from its immigrant population, but there was also a growing trend in the party towards a more hard-line approach. This article uses Jacques Derrida’s writing on hospitality to propose that the politics of the UMP and questions of identity, immigration and assimilation are key to the renewal of French horror cinema in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It argues that the films Sheitan (Kim Chapiron, 2006), Frontière(s) (Xavier Gens, 2007) and La Meute (Franck Richard, 2010) represent the white French anxiety over the nation’s political move towards the right (as opposed to a fear of the immigrant Other directly), reading these horror films as exhibiting the tension between tolerance and hospitality key to Derrida’s writing. Therefore, this article proposes that the negative depiction of white rural communities, the inclusion of characters of immigrant descent and the emphasis on ‘hosting’ locations such as the hotel and the roadside café reveal a country working through its position as a host nation within Fortress Europe.