[6] In this “small masterpiece of benighted romanticism”, an upright young captain of the gendarmerie, Langlois (Claude Girard) is tasked with accounting for the disappearance of a number of little girls in a remote snowbound village.

[8] A village elder and former public prosecutor (Charles Vanel), counsels the officer that the perpetrator responsible for the disappearances is likely a model citizen of the community, and whose “base instincts” are not easily discernible.

Thematically, this is a key transitional point in the film: appearances can lie, and the seeds of depravity may be concealed by the young officers’ own handsome visage.

[9] As Captain Langlois struggles to define the criminal’s motivation, he begins to display a cold indifference to death as he toys with the corpse of a small bird he has crushed with his hands.

Now the film enters its final phase, an extension of the atmosphere that Leterrier has established so subtly...Langlois, a cord stretched tight between his hands, looks through the window of a house in the village.