When I feel a film-fest coming on, I usually succumb to a shallow habit of scouring the internet for not only synopses, but also reviews.

Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon, and the various newspapers fill in on every aspect of the film – often to the point of revealing the very twists and turns that render the film thrilling.

Equally shamefully, I have been known to adhere to the views of said critics and shun certain films altogether.

This month, however, I side-stepped the squeals of deploration and snide smirks of reviewers and succumbed to the latest film snatched to quell my desire for all movies French and/or France-based.

Thankfully, it was to prove a prudent move, for Caché – or Hidden – was an exhilarating romp through little more than 110 minutes of chilling thrills, with an ending so mysterious that the cherry was well and truly teetered on the cake of white-knuckledness.

Directed by Michael Haneke – Le temps du loup (2003); La pianiste (2002) – Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche star as husband and wife Georges and Anne, a successful television presenter and book publisher respectively.

Residing in the Paris suburbs, Georges and Anne enjoy a suitably bourgeoisie life that comprises statuesque creaking book shelves, seemingly endless soirees, and the occasional meander to their teenage son’s swimming competitions.

The idyll is rocked, however, when Georges receives a videotape.

On it is a lengthy stream of surveillance footage of his home, shot from across the street.

And it is just the first of many: further tapes, wrapped in strange and disturbingly child-like drawings start to arrive, leaving Georges, his wife and his teenage son, Pierrot, unsettled.

The film steadily builds from there, as Georges starts looking to his past to try and find the answer to who is sending the tapes, only to find himself increasingly disturbed by the memories he recalls.

To peruse the criticism of Caché is to find an element of truth in each lament: while the lack of soundtrack rendered the movie for one critic an “exercise in pain” as the director seemingly does “everything he can to bore the audience, and the audience tries not to fall asleep or flee the theater” the absence of audio-tension contrastingly rendered the performances of Binoche, Auteuil and Lester Makedonsky (Pierrot) all the more profoundly riveting.

While mainstream thrillers herald the arrival of a horrific act, the silence lulls the viewer into a false sense of calm, only to be jerked rudely into realization at the unanticipated unfolding of events.

Once traumatised, one enters a disturbed state in which scenes that may not contain frights are nevertheless approached as doing so, as Auteuil’s protagonist lurches from one unsettling memory to the next.

Binoche provides a sublime contrast to Auteuil’s angst: visually captivating and emotionally charged, even when silent her expressions and body language render the scenes spectacularly entrancing.

Caché is, then, one movie to take the chance on. Personally, it was a disturbing yet masterful exercise in tense psychological viewing; for others, it became pure tedium.

Nevertheless, I cannot recommend it heartily enough – should you remain captivated to the end, it will continue to chill your thoughts for hours after.

Rating: 8/10