Trained as an engineer, Franck Thilliez has become a master of
thrillers.
In 2020, it ranked fourth among the biggest sellers of novels in France.
Its popular potential was therefore no longer to be proven.
And the idea of adapting
Syndrome [E]
, his eighth novel, the one where the author brings his two favorite investigators Lucie Hennebelle and Franck Sharko together for the first time, fit perfectly.
It stinks of marshmallow
We therefore expected to find the atmosphere of this novel which skilfully weaves its plot between sticky nightmares, mutilated bodies and neuroscience.
Syndrome E would in fact make it possible, through mental manipulation, to transform innocent individuals, especially children, into formidable murderers.
It should smell like formalin bathing the brains being removed from the victims.
Alas, it stinks of marshmallow, the carnival attraction.
This six-episode series (which could fit into three or four) looks like a ghost train of which we know all the tricks.
As if TF1 was trying to scare itself without ever daring to push the horror sliders.
As if director Laure de Butler and screenwriter Mathieu Missoffe were restrained.
And what a crazy idea to make Shako's dead daughter appear on the screen!
She follows him everywhere.
At the police station, spinning, in his bedroom… She is his bad conscience.
Her remorse since she was killed (along with her mother) during the Nice attack.
Only the policeman sees her, talks to her.
Which causes some misunderstandings, and above all a certain embarrassment for the viewer, but also for Vincent Elbaz, who embodies this broken cop.
Complete sinking
The actor overplays the drama, that of a cop anesthetized by deep pain.
Until the caricature.
To believe that misfortune suits him badly.
In any case, he offers him only a few nuances in his interpretation: barely more than two expressions on his emaciated face.
He only starts to cheer up around the fifth episode.
If the research on the famous Syndrome E, from which Thilliez is inspired, made it possible to mentally contaminate a being by cerebral stimulation, we would have liked Vincent Elbaz to be a little more stimulated, precisely.
In the skin of Inspector Hennebelle, Jennifer Decker is doing better.
Just like Dominique Blanc, who plays the villain of the story.
But is it necessary to escape from the Comédie-Française, of which they are respectively resident and member, to experience such a television adventure?
The question remains open.
Emmanuelle Béart, chief of police, plays what she is given to play, crumbs.
Bérengère Krief and Marius Colucci, a credible executor of low works, manage to save themselves from what, in every way, looks like a shipwreck.