If you consider for a moment how “Them” begins and then the secret revealed at the end, the whole movie doesn’t really make that much sense. This French horror film is based on a factual incident, but as with most movies based on real events, the filmmakers take some pretty extraordinary liberties with the details.

“Them” is kind of like “Blair Witch” meets any horror film in which two people are attacked inside their house. That is to say, this is a movie about two people attacked inside their home and a lot of the scenes are done with a handheld camera and a lot of shaking.

Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) and Lucas (Michael Cohen) are the couple. They live in the woods in a pretty impressive house considering he’s a do-nothing writer and she’s a teacher. I assume they’re renting. Anyway, one night, nameless, faceless, hood-adorned small people begin terrorizing them. The small people make a creepy sound, a clicking sound, which reminds me of a horror film that I can’t recall. Maybe it was “Signs”? I don’t care enough about the analogy to figure it out.

SPOILER ALERT!!

The revelation of the movie is that it’s based on a true story and that all of the terrorizers were kids between the ages of 10 and 15 and that they just wanted to play. The movie opens with a mother and daughter being terrorized in their car. The mother just disappears and the daughter is strangled in the car by a passenger who just pops up in the back seat.

Although the filmmakers do reveal that these are basically kids about three-quarters of the way through the film, the terror would have been immensely more terrifying and interesting had we known they were children right up front. That’s the huge mistake of the film. Murdering kids are a lot more frightening if you see who they are because then it’s not just another horror film with invisible predators.

As is “Them” is just another blah horror film.