Creature from the lake
2018 · 5m · Francia
Directed by Alexis Bédué, Amandine Canville, Capucine Rahmoun-Swierczynski, Léa Bresciani, Logan Cluber, Mallaury Simoes, Maria Castro Rodriguez, Nicolas Grangeaud, Orianne Siccardi, Renata Antunez, Victor Rouxel
Genres: comedy, horror, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
In the 1980s, a manly, experienced monster-hunter hero from a low-budget TV show, followed by his fat, cowardly camerawoman, goes to a remote lake on a full-moon night, when mysterious disappearances tend to occur.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A low-budget 80s monster-hunter pastiche that gleefully demolishes its own genre conventions—the 'fat, cowardly camerawoman' sidekick is doing the real work while the 'manly hero' is basically useless, which is exactly the kind of subversive gender-role inversion that makes consensus critics squirm.
The film understands its lineage to creature-feature schlock with enough formal precision to work as both satire and homage, positioning itself in dialogue with B-movie tropes rather than simply mocking them.
What makes this work on a shoestring is the casting decision—casting against type for the camerawoman role, letting her carry the actual narrative weight, transforms a joke premise into something with genuine character stakes and unexpected depth.