Director: Christophe Gans (Crying Freeman, Necronomicon)

This gutsy period production combines an old French legend about a large carnivorous beast terrorising the countryside, with the machinations of a religious sect bent on retribution of a different kind.

Thanks to a generous budget, the results are visually stunning. This flick has enough eye candy to give you Type-2 diabeties. It recalls Jean-Pierre Jeunet's style and the best work of Italian horror ace Michele Soavi, updated for post-Matrix audience expectations and showing off a few original touches of its own. The art direction and costumes are also incredible, as are the numerous fight scenes.

The only aspect I had trouble with was the story, which was fluid in some places but tenuous in others, especially during the second half. It helps to keep up with the dialogue passages – not so easy watching either the dubbed or subtitled options, or when you are not fully awake. But this is a minor complaint, since I am always grateful that fantasy films with this much scope and inventiveness can still be made.

The Canadian DVD features a so-called director's cut running to 156 mins NTSC. According to IMDB, some of the extra scenes are in the UK and presumably Australian DVDs; I saw those scenes myself on the local disc, which means there are three versions of the film. These changes would explain why the film lacks overall coherency – better that than any vagueness on my part.