THE ADVENT CALENDAR (2021)

 

(aka LE CALENDRIER. Shudder Original film. Director/screenwriter: Patrick Ridremont.)

 

Review

On December 3, 2020, paraplegic ex-dancer Eva Roussel (Eugénie Derouand) gets a surprise birthday visit from her close friend, Sophie (Honorine Magnier), who flew in from Germany to give her an old, pagan-Christian ornate, wooden German advent calendar she purchased from a “Munich Xmas market”. The back of the calendar reads: “Dump it and I’ll kill you.”

 

When Eva notes that it’s a “grim” statement, Sophie, shrugging, replies, “Germans are grim.” Eva opens the first date-door and eats the candy despite this and its three rules:

“Rule number 1. The calendar contains candy. If you eat one, eat them all. Or I’ll kill you.

“Rule number 2. Respect all rules until you open the last door. Or I’ll kill you.

“Rule number 3. Dump it and I’ll kill you.”

Crazy violent things happen at a rapid pace after she eats the first four candies (and continues doing so). Her father (played by an excellent Jean-François Garreud), who has Alzheimer’s and hasn’t spoken to her in some time, calls her and wishes her a happy birthday. An investor creep (Boris, played by Cyril Garnier) who aggressively hits on her has a car accident, not entirely unlike the car accident that made her a paraplegic—except he's dead in a horrible way. Other odd events, some good, follow. Many of these events are terrifying and dangerous for her and those around her, including her nurse boyfriend, William (Clément Olivieri).

This fast-paced, supernatural horror flick is an entertaining and an all-around sturdy movie, with its good acting, a strong script and ending, and an offbeat storyline. Animal lovers may cringe at one of its parts, although there’s no actual onscreen violence (or harm to the animal)—it’s all implied. This is a highly recommended French work, different than the usual Xmas terror fare.

RARE EXPORTS (2010)

 

(a.k.a. RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS STORY; director/co-screenwriter: Jalmari Helander. Co-screenwriter: Juuso Helander, Jalmari’s brother. Dialogue writers: Petri Jokiranta and Sami Parkinnen.)

 

Review

This Finnish-language (with some English dialogue) film is a delightful, masterful mix of light and darkness, humor, fantasy, brief action, horror, mythology, and heart. It’s rated R for male/nonsexual nudity, brief violence, thematic darkness, occasional bloodiness, and profanity.

After an American company, Subzero Inc., falsely advertising itself as a crew of “seismic researchers,” blasts open the icy tomb of the original, beastly Santa Claus within the Korvatunturi Mountains, strange things happen in the area.

Meanwhile, a young boy, Pietari Kontio, is concerned about the presence of Subzero Inc. and its continuous mountain-blasting. He researches the original Santa myth (where he’s a child-devouring monster who was frozen, trapped by the Sami people). Then the reindeer roundup goes awry, One of the American crew members─thirty years old, but he looks like an old, feral-eyed man─is found in Pietari’s father’s illegal wolf pit, harbinger of the chaos to come.

At eighty-four-minutes, RARE moves at a brisk pace. The deft, multi-genre tone of it is mostly light with a touch of dark, its ambience furthered by Mika Orasmaa’s cinematography and Juri Seppä and Miska Seppä’s spot-on soundtrack. The cast is dead-on as well, especially Pietari (played by Onni Tommila) and his father (Rauno, played by Jorma Tommila, Onni’s real-life father). Jalmari Helander, the director, is Onni’s maternal uncle.

RARE is one of my Top Five Christmas movies of all-time for its originality, its charm (it always maintains a heartfelt feel, even when events are dark) and its overall execution by the filmmakers. Well worth your time this, if the above elements appeal to you, and you keep your expectations realistic.

THEM (2006)

 

(a.k.a. ILS; directors/screenwriters: David Moreau and Xavier Palud).

Review

Plot: Creep-about sadists toy with a couple in their isolated country home.

Based on real-life Romanian murders (a couple was stalked and killed by three teenagers), THEM is a promising French thriller that goes quickly awry. The lead actors’ performances are great, even real reactions sometimes (actress Olivia Bonamy, claustrophobic in real life, crawled through narrow tunnels). The set-up pre-terror scenes are well-written, there’s palpable sense of isolation and unease throughout the film, but the all-flight-little-fight characters are dumb, even for a stalk-torture-kill film. At several points, they could’ve easily finished off a killer or two after knocking them down, but what do they do? They run. After the second time, I stopped caring about the characters, knowing how this was likely to go. More than an overlong hour later, it finally happens. . . all style, little substance, with a great, bleakly hilarious end-shot of one of the main characters.

NOBODY SLEEPS IN THE WOODS TONIGHT (2020)

(Director/co-screenwriter: Bartosz M. Kowalski. . Co-screenwriters: Jan Kwiecinski and Mirella Zaradkiewicz.)

Storyline

Adolescents, assigned to a survival camp, try to fend off two hideous cannibals.

Review

This Polish slasher flick, a Netflix Original film, is paced like a drama with some stalk-and-slay scenes (one of them referencing an iconic kill scene from FRIDAY THE 13^TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD, 1988). There is little suspense in NOBODY, the killers are shown early and often. The production value of the movie is good, considering its low budget, but─viewed as a horror film─it’s a “meh” effort, best watched (if it must be watched) as one is drifting off to sleep—that way, you won’t miss anything memorable.

ANGST (1983)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Gerald Kargl. Co-screenwriter / cinematographer/ editor: Zbigniew Rybcynski)

Storyline

A recently-released-from-prison, nervous psychopath breaks into a house and terrorizes its three adult inhabitants.

 

Review

Supposedly “based on a true story,” ANGST is a memorable, impressive German film for the most part. Its docudrama style was ahead of its time, its starkly shot and lit style later seen in films like HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986) and MAN BITES DOG (1992). The acting in ANGST is excellent, especially Erwin Leder as the twitchy K, the Psychopath. His sweaty, bulging eyed gaze and clenched jaw fills much of this eighty-six-minute feature with an unsettled feel, aided by Zbigniew Rybcynski’s always-roving, sometimes jerky camerawork and extreme close-ups, off-set by shots of open rural country. K’s narration of his horrible childhood and subsequent prison sentences prior to his most recent release is illuminating, damning of society and its justice system, and bleakly humorous (psychiatrists refuse to declare him insane, something he clearly is).

The violence is brutal in some parts (particularly the bloody death of the twenty-something Daughter, played by Silvia Ryder, billed as Silvia Rabenreither). Its violence is not as grim as that of HENRY but it’s harsh compared to the slick, Hollywood style of many horror films.

What makes ANGST less than perfect is its long takes, which seem to be intentional, perhaps to further throw off the viewer, giving one a sense of what it feels like to be inside K’s head (he circles people and things even when his intentions are evident). The film runs about a half hour too long, so those used to short-take, efficient tale-telling editing may find Kargl and Rybcynski’s style irritating. That said, this jarring, distinctive and often effective chilling take on the almost-rabid K is one worth viewing at least once, if one doesn’t mind its excessive, fleshed-out-into-a-feature length.

MALASAÑA 32 (2020)

 

(a.k.a. 32 MALASANA STREET; director: Albert Pintó. Screenwriters: Ramón Campos, Gema R. Neira, David Orea and Salvador S. Molina.)

Storyline

A family, used to country living, moves into a big-city haunted house.

Review

Set in 1976, MALASAÑA starts off as a promising, drenched-in-dark-filtered-spookiness flick. Its building, exterior and interior, is baroque with long shadows and corners where one  expects creepy fingers to wrap around them. The acting is all-around good─their sense of desperate poverty and alienation with their surroundings is palpable.

Unfortunately, it’s only a few minutes before MALASAÑA meanders into annoying flash-cut-image moments, ineffective scenes that only pad out the film’s running time, and a few jump-cuts too many. When it becomes an EXORCIST-lite possession flick, it’s a by-the-numbers work. (I initially liked the twist involving Clara’s identity, but the film’s meandering script watered down her character, making her another bland ingredient in its soupy mess.)

MALASAÑA, a deeply flawed work, has talented people involved in it. It would have been better with a tighter script that was less choppy and capitalized on its Clara-related uniqueness (and given her character more depth and humanity). As it is, the hour-and-forty-four-minute flick feels like an empty exercise in sometimes-creepy style.