2000 French film
The Crimson Rivers (French: Les Rivières pourpres) is a 2000 French psychological thriller film starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel. The film, which was directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, is based on the novel Blood Red Rivers by Jean-Christophe Grangé. The screenplay was written by Grangé and Mathieu Kassovitz.
The film is about two detectives who investigate a series of grisly murders in and around an isolated university campus in a deep valley of the French Alps. With a $25 million budget, the movie went on to gross $60 million from a worldwide theatrical release. Despite its box office success, one of its stars, Vincent Cassel, admitted, "I can't help explain the film because I didn't understand it! We cut out everything in the film that was explanatory, therefore 'boring' [according to the director]. You end up with a film that's not boring but you don't understand it [at] all".
A sequel, Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse (Les Rivières pourpres II: Les Anges de l'apocalypse), was released in 2004 and a tv series sequel, titled The Crimson Rivers, aired in 2018.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.