‘The Ones Who Grieve’ review: a deliberately brutal period horror that divides audiences

What the film is and how it feels

Quarxx's The Ones Who Grieve (Les Âmes en peine) takes place at the end of the 19th century in an isolated French community dealing with a mysterious affliction called the "Black Veil." The central figure, Jacob, works as a "Masker" — he sews shut eyes and mouths, fits wooden masks, and abandons the afflicted to the woods under a scriptural rationale. That setup yields a film that is consistently nihilistic and deliberately cruel.

The movie is built as a series of escalating, graphic set pieces. Early scenes establish a severe level of violence — including an operation on a child — and the film continues in that register, depicting sexual violence, mutilation, cannibalism, and incest. The aesthetic and thematic approach recalls the French Extremity strain of horror: formal, austere, and unflinching in its depiction of bodily degradation.

Filmmaking, performances, and tone

Zélie Rixhon (as Zélie), Isabelle Anciaux (as Emilie), and Thierry Frémont (as Jacob) give strong work within the limits of the screenplay. Performances often read as constrained by a script that offers little nuance for its female characters: their roles center on suffering. Jacob functions as a monstrous fulcrum, spouting scripture to justify cruelty rather than as a character with layered motives.

Structure and thematic reach

Narratively the film is more vignette-driven than plot-driven. It retains a linear throughline but relies on repeated episodes of brutality rather than building a conventional character arc. The review suggests Quarxx does intend a point about the cycle of violence and patriarchal cruelty, but questions whether the film moves beyond presenting cruelty to make a broader, satisfying argument.

For whom this works

• Recommended for viewers who actively seek confrontational, festival-style horror and those who miss aggressive, boundary-pushing horror aesthetics.

Bottom line

Grieve succeeds as an endurance test and as uncompromised genre filmmaking: it is visceral, meticulously staged, and relentlessly bleak. However, its persistent unpleasantness and limited thematic payoff will leave many viewers hollow rather than fulfilled.