Tis the season for holiday decorations, festive music playing nonstop on the radio, and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE airing on a loop on a variety of cable stations. The holiday season is a time for joy, bringing people together, and the hope of a new year around the corner. The horror community certainly never misses out on the celebrations, with our own spin of course. Joining the lexicon of Yuletide terrors is Patrick Ridremont’s THE ADVENT CALENDAR, which tells the story of a former dancer named Eva (Eugénie Derouand) who has been paralyzed for the last several years because of an accident. Eva is gifted an advent calendar that promises to give her the ability to walk again. If she can follow all its rules for the next 24 days that is. Seems too good to be true, and perhaps it is, because as Eva will come to learn, opening each door on the calendar comes along with grave consequences, leaving her with an important decision to make.
The advent calendar in question ends up in Eva’s hands as a birthday gift from her friend Sophie (Honorine Magnier), who may just be the worst friend in the history of cinema. These two performers do have great chemistry with one another and there is a real natural ease present in their scenes together, despite the way that Sophie crashes in like a tornado to destroy Eva’s life. Every night at midnight, a cardboard rendering of a demon named Ich pops out of the calendar to remind Eva of rule number one: she must eat every candy inside of the calendar, or else she will die. If she lives to the end of the 24 days, she will then be able to walk. This brings us to a frustrating element of THE ADVENT CALENDAR, which is that it seems to not always play by its own rules. Sometimes, Eva will give the chocolate to someone else and yet that doesn’t count as breaking a rule. It’s the sort of thing where if you suspend your disbelief enough, you can let it go and enjoy yourself, and if you don’t, you may spend much of the movie stuck in the weeds of how the rules operate.
In addition to the cardboard cutout of Ich, we get further glimpses of the demon within the calendar every time Eva opens a door. Ich is hinted at in gooey, warped sequences that are reminiscent of Brandon Cronenberg’s POSSESSOR in their style, and they are also some of the most exciting moments of the film. He is quite the formidable villain and manages to remain just as scary the more you see of him. Looming and threatening, and impossible to take your eyes off of, Ich is a welcome addition to the library of nightmare inducing horror monsters. Ich is also deadly, orchestrating gruesome and creative sacrificial murders as the days go on. Fair warning that the first of these deaths comes on the heels of an incredibly sexually violent encounter, and while this allows the death to feel like a worthy punishment, the scene leading up to it can be hard to watch.
Eva seems like a reasonable, compassionate, and capable person, so it may seem unbelievable that she would be so willing to allow these murders to take place. However, something else THE ADVENT CALENDAR is incredibly successful at is showing exactly why the promise of walking would be so enticing to Eva. She has clearly adapted well to her new lifestyle, living on her own and supporting herself, but we see the treatment she receives from other people in response to her. She must deal with a boss who complains about the cost of making the office accessible, a new coworker who tells her how brave she is for existing, and strangers who give her dirty looks for having to move out of her way when she passes by. Each of these interactions provides a different flavor of insulting indignity that swiftly and succinctly put the audience in Eva’s shoes and allows us to see why the proposition from Ich would be difficult to pass up.
Similar to the inconsistencies with who needs to eat the candies, it seems as though the sacrifices only need to happen on certain days. Granted, we do not see what takes place on each of the 24 days, which was a very smart move given that 24 days of the same thing happening would make any movie boring, not to mention five hours long. Although THE ADVENT CALENDAR could be very repetitive in nature, it does take an unexpected turn that alleviates the aforementioned danger of the same thing happening over and over again. However, despite this welcome narrative shift, THE ADVENT CALENDAR could still have done with a bit of a tighter pace. The movie felt like it should be reaching its natural conclusion and yet there were still four days left on the calendar to get through. Soon after, there was a new character introduced with only 20 minutes remaining in the film’s runtime, leading us to an abrupt and somewhat rushed conclusion. It feels like with some slight adjustments, the different acts of the movie could be more balanced.
In many other aspects however, THE ADVENT CALENDAR is an exciting success. Most strikingly is Derouand’s performance as Eva, and her ability to carry a film as she is in nearly every scene. She is human in a way that allows the audience to empathize with and understand even her most questionable decisions. Additionally, there is a whole host of unnerving imagery and visuals, all shot in compelling ways with the simplest approach never being the default. There were also one or two shots that left me in disbelief thinking, “how did they do that,” which is a feeling I always enjoy. With little to no Christmas spirit to be found, THE ADVENT CALENDAR is not likely to provide you with your festive fix, but it is sure to leave you itching to flip on the light and make sure there’s nothing in that dark corner over there. So, cozy up with some candy (perhaps an After Eight mint chocolate) and open up the door to THE ADVENT CALENDAR, available on Shudder starting December 2nd. Just be careful what you wish for…
Tags: Advent Calendar, Christmas, Eugenie Derouand, Holiday Horror, Patrick Ridremont, Shudder
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