As it is so near Christmas, it felt fitting to watch a horror film based around that season. Having recently gone crawling back to Shudder, I decided I would find an old classic to watch, but then I spotted The Advent Calendar and was intrigued. This Belgium based French language horror (original title Le calendrier), written and directed by Patrick Ridremont, follows somewhat of a familiar format for a cursed time frame horror, but impressed due to how clever it became towards the end.
Paraplegic Eva (Eugénie Derouand) is gifted an ornately crafted antique advent calendar on her birthday by her best friend, who had picked it up while working in Germany. She notices it has some sinister rules surrounding it, that if you attempt to throw it away, refuse to eat any of the chocolates hidden behind each of the twenty four locked doors, or not follow the instructions then you will be killed. Figuring that wasn't something to take seriously, Eva opens the first door and eats the chocolate within. She begins to experience strange events associated with each new door she opens. A door that contained her father's favourite chocolate behind it for instance led to him calling her, something that should be impossible, not only as he is in late stages of Alzheimer's and long ago forgot she existed, but also because he calls her from a phone that had been disconnected. Elsewhere, a door that contained within it a toy car (that is promptly savaged by Eva's dog), results in a man who tried to rape Eva getting into a deadly car crash. At first Eva puts these strange situations down to coincidence and the chocolates being drugged, but with the use of her legs slowly starting to come back as a result of eating the chocolates, Eva comes to realise that completing the calendar may result in her disability getting cured completely, though at a terrible cost to her and those around her.
So, as I said in my intro, this does fall into a well trodden sub-genre of horror, one that me personally stretches back to The Ring, though I guess goes back to at least the classic 'Monkey's Paw' fable. The most recent entry I can think of would be Smile, a great concept if not executed that satisfyingly. Here, the cursed time frame is associated with the twenty four advent days of December. This neatly splits the film up into little mini chapters, usually opened with one of the dates appearing on the screen. Eva doesn't make for the most sympathetic of protagonists, but she is one with reasons for being the way she is. Sardonic, and quietly bitter, she misses the good times before the accident that claimed the use of her lower body. She is surrounded by people that are not good for her, a horrid boss who appears to have only hired her for the grant he would be given, a wicked stepmother and an Alzheimer's riddled father. Even her best friend, Sophie (Honorine Magnier) is shown to be very self centered, not only was she the one who gifted Eva the cursed calendar (revealing later she had stolen it), but it is clearly insinuated that she was the one that caused the accident that made her wheelchair bound. As such, despite all the terrible things that begin to happen, you do question if it is worth the cost for someone so unhappy with their life.
There are some interesting moments that occur within the film as a consequence of the curse, time travel, teleportation, missing time, blackouts. These all lead to Eva becoming visibly messed up, with good make-up effects to show her deterioration. The scenes of violence are often implied rather than shown, but work well. Having a dog chew up a toy car, edited together with scenes of the real car getting broken in a similar manner were fun, as was later when the effects inflicted on a doll are edited with scenes of a character in a bath suffering similar trauma. Also, there was one very bloody sequence involving man's best friend, that looked great on film.
The central antagonist appears more and more as the film goes on, a somewhat generic look of a thin demonic looking humanoid. I did like his interactions with Eva, less about being some terrible evil, more about him encouraging the woman to continue with her chocolate based pact. The religious angle was also neat, with the demonic being having some link to religion, and many of the chocolates referring to religious iconography. It was cool also that there is zero explanation for how the calendar came to be, there is a reveal of who the previous owner was (linking to the clever direction the plot went in). It leads up to an open ended finish, in which it is up to the viewer to decide what direction the protagonist chose to head in.
The central antagonist appears more and more as the film goes on, a somewhat generic look of a thin demonic looking humanoid. I did like his interactions with Eva, less about being some terrible evil, more about him encouraging the woman to continue with her chocolate based pact. The religious angle was also neat, with the demonic being having some link to religion, and many of the chocolates referring to religious iconography. It was cool also that there is zero explanation for how the calendar came to be, there is a reveal of who the previous owner was (linking to the clever direction the plot went in). It leads up to an open ended finish, in which it is up to the viewer to decide what direction the protagonist chose to head in.
As much as the central character wasn't the most noble of people (going out of her way to be twisted on occasion), it felt fresh having a disabled character as the lead, and it was fresh that the film seemed to suggest being selfish is as much a valid choice as being noble. The Advent Calendar is currently streaming on Shudder, it might be a familiar story, but it was executed wonderfully.
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