A film that messes with minds is the tip of the iceberg in ‘Syndrome E’

A mind control mystery has two French cops crossing the globe on the trail of a sinister conspiracy.

A man and a woman stand in front of a board where several headshots and other pieces of paper have been pinned. They stare intently towards the camera.

Vincent Elbaz and Jennifer Decker in 'Syndrome E'. Credit: Caroline Dubois / Escazal / TF1

“I think I know what happened now. And it concerns us all”. That’s the kind of mysterious message nobody wants to get in the middle of the night. Detective Lucie Henebelle (Jennifer Decker) is on patrol when the voicemail comes through. It’s from a friend she hasn’t seen in months; what harm could it do for her and her partner to stop by and check in on him? Before she went to work she told her son she was a monster hunter. She’s about to realise just how true that is.

What should have been a quick stop at her friend’s run-down house quickly turns into a homicide investigation, with a mystery fleeing man the obvious suspect. Then things take a turn for the weird. Henebelle’s friend died watching an old black and white movie, and the projector’s still running. She can’t look away as a little girl watches her from the screen. When her partner returns she’s crying tears of blood. He says her name: she turns and shoots him twice.

As you might have guessed, Syndrome E isn’t your usual crime drama. Based on a best-seller by French thriller author Franck Thilliez, it centres on a very unusual investigation being handled by two very damaged cops, taking them across Europe, Canada and northern Africa as they investigate a mystery that stretches back 50 years to the heart of the Cold War – one that’s still very much alive today.

A man in a suit, covered in dust and with an armband that says POLICE, and a woman in a dark jacket stand looking down and to one side. Loose wires hang from the ceiling behind them.

Frank Sharko (Vincent Elbaz) and Lucie Henebelle (Jennifer Decker). Credit: Caroline Dubois / Escazal / TF1

For Frank Sharko (Vincent Elbaz), at first it’s just another offbeat case. In the series’ very first scene we see him smashing through a high-rise window as he takes down a suspect known as “The Strangler”; clearly he’s someone who gets the job done. “The cop who fired cried tears of blood,” says his boss as she gives him the Henebelle shooting case. “Just the kind of thing you love”.

[The following paragraph contains a minor spoiler regarding one of the characters. If you'd rather puzzle it out yourself, head straight over to

SBS On Demand to start watching now

He’s also someone who has a young girl constantly at his heels, whether he’s flat on the pavement or at work at headquarters. At first it’s unusual. When she starts crawling around a crime scene, it’s much more than that. It turns out Sharko is a man haunted – in a very literal sense. His wife and daughter died in a terrorist attack, and for whatever reason his daughter doesn’t seem to have moved on. It’s not a scary kind of haunting, but it’s definitely distracting. And with what he’s got coming up, he’s going to need to be fully focused on his job.

And while Elbaz plays Sharko as your typical tough-as-nails investigator (one who can’t even get the names of his team members right), Decker’s performance gives Henebelle a more emotional – and human – side. She’s clearly a good cop, but she’s also a regular human being, someone who’s upset by what’s happened and needs answers for her own peace of mind. She can hold her own with Sharko, but she can be fragile too: she’s not your typical TV cop.

A woman in a red-brown jacket stands with folded arms. A wall covered in a grid of black and white images can be seen behind her.

Detective Lucie Henebelle (Jennifer Decker) needs answers. Credit: Tamalet Christine / Escazal / TF1

Which works out well, because this is definitely not your typical police drama. Maybe it was stress that caused Henebelle to pull the trigger, but that doesn’t explain her dead friend’s wall covered with drawings of bleeding eyes and worse. Soon the body count rises again, and when she takes a MRI test to try and figure out what happened to her the results only create more questions. And what does any of this have to do with the sinister figures in Casablanca kidnapping kids with a white van with an eye painted on the side?

A woman and a mad crouch in a doorway. Both have orange armbands with the words 'POLICE' in them. Two more people, also with orange armbands, can be seen behind them.

The cast also includes Bérengère Krief as Lieutenant Clara Barsky and Kool Shen as Captain Virgile di Maria. Credit: Caroline Dubois / Escazal / TF1

It's the way Syndrome E mixes the deeply strange and the familiar that gives it such a compellingly creepy tone. While Sharko and his team are trying to figure out if they’re simply investigating a burglary gone wrong, we already know there’s more going on. It’s not quite a horror movie where you’re shouting at the heroine not to go down into the basement, but there’s definitely a feeling that whatever’s going on, it’s worse than it looks.

And if it starts with someone crying tears of blood, how much worse can it get?

Six-episode series Syndrome E is streaming now at SBS On Demand.