Retrospective Film Review

Caché (2005) • 20 Years Later — disturbing secrets and modern evil in a modern classic

A married couple is terrorised by a series of surveillance videotapes left on their front porch.

A videotape arrives on a Parisian couple’s doorstep. It’s wrapped up in a crude drawing: a man clutches his throat, vomiting blood. The cassette reveals a static shot of their suburban home, playing for hours. On the tape, Anne (Juliet Binoche) is filmed leaving for work, while Georges (Daniel Auteuil) is captured leaving for the office forty minutes later, even walking past the man filming them. Yet, he saw nothing. Their stalker remained obscure from his mind, almost as though he were invisible.

Both Anne and Georges dismiss this as an unsettling, but ultimately stupid prank. However, then a second tape arrives on their doorstep. Then Anne receives a threatening telephone call from an anonymous man, demanding to speak with Georges over and over again, as though deranged. When Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky), their 12-year-old son, receives a similarly baleful drawing at school, Anne…