Hi,

Today I picked up "Them" aka "IIs" from a local import shop for $22. It was a blind buy. I guess the DVD came out in Korea on the 7th of this month. It is a French Film. Anyhow, upon getting home I checked IMDB and it didn't even have 5 votes as of yet. No score. I then checked release dates, and that's what I've found somewhat interesting;

France 8 April 2006 (Cognac Film Festival)
France 18 May 2006 (Cannes Film Market)
France 19 July 2006

My next thought is "bootleg" because of the fact I've beat the theatrical release. Wrong!

It seems to be for sale only in Korea (which makes sense since my box has Korean writing on it), but even more odd only at 1 retailer;

http://www.dvdfromkorea.com/ (Do a search for "Them")

I can't find it on yesasia, amazon france, xploited, koreandvds.com or any of the other online retailers as "Them" or Ils? Not even a search for cast brings up anything.

Does this happen often? I find it odd that a Korean company has released a French Film before the theatrical release in it's own native country, plus it doesn't seem like anyone other than one retailer has it? Did it just slip under the radar? Usually we get imports like Hero, B13 or Nightwatch etc... early, but they've at least played already in their respective countries right?

Here is the imdb link;
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465203/

I plan on throwing it in this weekend. I'll post some quick thoughts on it.

I wrote about Ils earlier.

It apparently was released in Korean theatres in April. And it is on Yesasia as that's where I saw it first.

Let me know how it is as I was thinking about picking it up.

I'd agree with you that it certainly is unusual. However, I don't quite think it is as rare as one might initially believe. One recent example that springs to mind is for a Korean film called "Road" that played the festival circuit a year or so ago. I haven't followed it since and I don't know if it has received its general release in Korea even now. But it did come out via Thai DVD a long while back (I even posted about it somewhere here). So it might have received a general release in Thailand and thus the DVD, while in Korea it may still be on hold (and it certainly was back at the time the Thai DVD was released). If you really dig in to the topic, with so many DVDs coming out from so many different countries, I'd bet it might happen more than we realize. Especially with stuff that gets some exposure via the festival circuit and maybe strikes a foreign deal but for whatever reasons experiences a delay in domestic distribution. I still don't know how legitimate it was, and I don't believe it quite fits what you are looking for, but I remember that Estonian (?) DVD release of "Revolver" that slipped out really fast and maybe even when the film was still fresh in UK theaters (don't really remember all the specifics).

As for "Them" aka "Ils", in addition to the one e-tailer you mentioned, it is also available via dvdheaven and DVDAsian.

Thanks flixtime. I think you're right, it probobly does happen more than we know. I notice Korean companies releasing a lot of non-korean stuff, so I'm going to have to pay closer attention to those sites. Sorry I didn't see the other post steen, or I would have just responded to that.

My plans changed tonight, so I ended up watching it. I enjoyed it. I'm not sure how to rank it because I don't watch a lot of horror (well, if you want to consider it that), but I'd say I enjoyed it a lot more than High Tension for example (I use that as a baseline as it's French, and horror). In some ways, it felt like a Shyamalan film at times to me in the way the tension was built up by showing the audience very little in what "they" are, but keeping the viewer glued to the screen through various events. Part of the tension also has to be credited to the way the film was shot. The atmosphere was great for what they had to work with, and almost brought me back to the first time I watched Blair Witch. The director used silence perfectly, and managed to turn a forest and a few tunnels into what felt like the perfect set for this film.

Apparently it was based on true events. Right before the credits role they speak more on it, and it's something I want to verify now to see if this is true. If it is true, I'd be interested in seeing a documentary on these events also. Pretty interesting movie. I'm sure this will be spoken of more once more people get a chance to see it

Bump......this post is not entirely in line with this discussion, but does anyone have any info. on the R1 U.S. DVD release of this title - "Ils" aka "Them"? DVDVerdict's DVD release list as well as the release list posted in the DVD Discussion Forum of this site both list it as releasing this week. However, there seems to be no trace of it at any of the e-tailers I checked. This title wasn't high priority for me at the time so I bypassed the previous English-friendly releases from France, Korea, and Thailand (among others perhaps). Now I'm curious to check it out and am wondering whether I already have or will soon have a R1 option, or if I should simply pick up one of the other region English-friendly releases.

edited to add: I see from IMDb's message boards that there was a R1 Canadian release on April 3rd. One person mentions it having both French and also an English dub, but seemingly no English subs (which would seem out of the ordinary). Checking a Canadian etailer listing indicates it does have English subs. Can anyone confirm the specs on the Canadian R1 DVD?

Heck, the Korean disc seems priced okay enough, so maybe I should just go for that.

edited again to add: Or maybe not so simple, might the Korean release be cropped from 2.35:1 to 1.85:1 (Korean packaging lists 1.85:1, French DVD was 2.35:1)?

Hope this isin't thread-capping, but I have an extra sealed copy of the Canadian version of ILS for sale for $15ppd if anyone is interested.

Full Screen
English 5.1
French 2.0
No Subtitles
No Special Features