Adapted from Jean-Christophe Grangé's bestseller, Mathieu Kassovitz's fourth feature is the first based on borrowed material and this lack of personal input proves fatal. The influence of Se7en is almost overwhelming, both in the tone of the grisly serial crimes and in the teaming of Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel as a veteran-rookie cop duo, whose uncomfortable alliance is the picture's most prominent feature. Cinematographer Thierry Arbogast's filming of the Alpine locations is suitably spectacular, but neither the detectives nor their suspects at a sinister remote university have any depth. Thus, the ingenious resolution emerges from a muddle of half-clues to indifferent shrugs rather than stunned gasps.

Two French policemen, one investigating a grisly murder at a remote mountain college, the other working on the desecration of a young girl's grave by skinheads, are brought together by the clues from their respective cases. Soon after they start working together, more murders are committed, and the pair begin to discover just what dark secrets are behind the killings.