THE ADVENT CALENDAR (2021 - French)

Studio:     Shudder
Director:    Patrick Ridremont
Writer:     Patrick Ridremont
Producer:  Virginie Ogouz, Alain Benguigui
Stars:     Eugenie Derouand, Honorine Magnier, Clement Olivieri, Janis Abrikh, Cyril Garnier, Vladimir Perrin, Fabien Jegoudez, Jean-Francois Garreaud

Review Score:

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Summary:

A paraplegic woman receives an antique advent calendar whose supernatural curse creates unpredictable consequences for the people in her life.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3rd

As a birthday present, Sophie gifts her paraplegic friend Eva Roussel with an antique wooden advent calendar she stole while vacationing in Germany. Assuming it to be a lark, the two women review the calendar’s three rules. Rule one says if you eat one candy, you must eat them all or else “Ich” will kill you. Rule two instructs the user to respect the rules until they open the last door, or else Ich will kill them. Rule three claims Ich will also kill anyone who tries to get rid of the calendar.

Eva opens the first door and eats the chocolate found inside. Eva is surprised to see her Alzheimer’s-afflicted father’s favorite brand of chocolate behind the second door. The third door contains a card depicting Jesus and Satan that reads, “To cure hurt, destroy what hurt you.” Eva tries to open the fourth door early, but finds it impossible to unlock even with the key.

DECEMBER 4th

At midnight, a wooden figure of a priest pops out of the box’s top while a strange recording notes the 12 o’clock hour. Eva opens the fourth door to find a white candy shaped like baby Jesus. The wrapper reads, “Jesus said to the cripple, ‘Arise and walk.’” Unsettled, Eva sets the candy aside.

After Sophie leaves, Eva eats the second chocolate while thinking of her father. Eva’s father then unexpectedly calls on a disconnected phone to briefly wish Eva a happy birthday.

At work that morning, Eva’s condescending boss John Antonich introduces Eva’s new coworker Myriam Lemaire. Eva learns John is reducing her hours and giving that work to Myriam instead.

Sophie takes Eva out for drinks with her new boyfriend Thomas and his misogynistic stockbroker friend Boris. While Sophie stays at the bar with Thomas, Boris drives Eva home around midnight. Boris begins sexually assaulting Eva, leading to a physical fight that ends with Boris throwing Eva out of his car. As Boris speeds away, Eva screams at him to drop dead.

DECEMBER 5th

Inside Eva’s house, the calendar’s fifth door opens by itself. A miniature replica of Boris’s car rolls out. Eva’s dog Marvin viciously chews on the toy. At the same time, Boris’s car suddenly flips and gets crushed with Boris inside.

After learning of Boris’s death from Sophie, Eva receives a posthumous apology text that includes a link to an online trading account. Eva receives the money Boris made on his last stock market transaction.

DECEMBER 6th

Eva unlocks a heart-shaped candy. At a café, Eva secretly drops the candy in a drink belonging to William, a man she developed a crush on after repeatedly seeing him in the park. William, who turns out to be a nurse, introduces himself to Eva and they begin a romance.

DECEMBER 7th

Eva eats a clock-shaped candy and inexplicably loses three days. Eva notices she somehow ate the candies during the missing days.

DECEMBER 10th

Eva’s boss angrily fires her for missing three days of work. Eva tells William about the mysterious candies and how they appear to be affecting her life, but doesn’t tell him about the heart-shaped one.

Eva discovers that the four wrappers from December 7-10 form a corporate logo. Eva invests the money she received from Boris in that company and begins making a large amount of money.

DECEMBER 11th

Concerned about the calendar, Eva puts a book on its top to prevent Ich from popping up at midnight. The next door opens anyway. Eva’s dog Marvin eats a bone-shaped treat found inside.

When she wakes in the morning, Eva finds Marvin covered in blood. Eva retrieves a distinctive necklace from Marvin’s mouth and realizes her dog mauled her former boss to death.

DECEMBER 12th

Eva unlocks another white Jesus candy. Remembering the “Arise” quote, Eva eats the candy along with the previous one she set aside. Eva begins convulsing and then collapses.

Eva wakes in a hospital. William informs Eva that he found her in the street outside her house clutching the calendar. Eva remembers she was briefly able to walk again.

DECEMBER 13th

An elderly hospital patient with dementia brings the calendar over to Eva’s bed. Echoing Ich’s demonic voice, the woman says, “Deliver me from evil.” A black communion wafer comes out of the thirteenth box. Eva feeds it to the woman and she dies.

DECEMBER 14th

Eva unlocks another of her father’s favorite chocolates. Eva brings the candy to the mansion where her invalid father lives with Eva’s wicked stepmother Agnes. Eva feeds the chocolate to her father. After recognizing his daughter in a rare moment of lucidity, Eva’s father tells her he wishes to join her mother. He also warns that the calendar will demand more sacrifices, and Eva will have to keep killing if she wants to walk again.

DECEMBER 15th

Eva tells William how the white candies allowed her to walk. Having unlocked another Jesus candy, Eva asks William to watch as she eats this one. Following another convulsion, Eva regains the feeling in her thighs.

While Eva goes for her regular swim at a public pool, William stops by her house to drop off keys she left behind. William finds the disturbing notes Eva has been keeping regarding the calendar and connected deaths. A frightening voice calls William on Eva’s disconnected phone. William goes over to the calendar and sees a backwards message being scrawled on an opaque window in one of the doors.

Alarmed, William takes the calendar to a pond and throws it in the water. A demon rises and drowns William.

DECEMBER 16th

Eva blacks out at the pool and loses several hours again. Eva sees herself underwater with William as he drowns. Upon regaining consciousness, Eva discovers it is now evening. Following a nightmarish encounter with the creature, Eva wakes up wet at home with the calendar on her floor.

Antoine, a fellow swimmer who hit on Eva until he found out she was crippled, brings Eva’s wheelchair to her house since it was left behind at the pool. Eva shouts at him to leave.

DECEMBER 17th

Eva hears William’s voice echoing as she eats a shiny candy. Eva goes to a crack in her mirror and sees through time to when William was in her house. Eva etches the warning in the glass, but William takes the box to the pond anyway.

DECEMBER 18th

Eva feels the demon compelling her to pick up a kitchen knife. Sophie comes over later to discover Eva slaughtered her dog while entranced.

DECEMBER 19th

Sophie retrieves a blue pill with a penis drawing on it from the nineteenth door. Sophie pockets the pill. When Eva asks her what was inside, Sophie lies and says it was a stick of gum. Eva demands to have it. Sophie gives Eva an ordinary stick of gum. Eva is confused when she chews it and nothing happens.

DECEMBER 20th

A ballerina candy makes Eva relive the memory of how she became crippled due to Sophie’s distracted driving. Concerned for her friend’s mental health, Sophie takes Eva to Thomas’s secluded cabin to join them for a holiday getaway.

DECEMBER 21st

Eva worries when the figure of Ich is missing from the midnight pop-up. Eva unlocks another white Jesus candy.

While talking about the accident that crippled her, Sophie apologizes for the pain she caused Eva. Eva warns Sophie to leave because if she eats the candy, she will walk again, but Ich will hurt Sophie. Feeling guilty, Sophie tells Eva to eat the candy anyway. Eva gives the candy to Sophie to hold onto so Eva can eat it later while she is alone.

After Sophie exits, Eva repeatedly pleads for the calendar to not take revenge on Sophie. Eva breaks open the top of the box to find a rolled canvas painting by German artist Alois Hoffman depicting the savage murders of a woman and a child.

Sophie has Thomas eat the blue pill before sex. Thomas becomes possessed and kills Sophie. The demon appears and kills Thomas. The demon then forces Eva to eat the Jesus candy. Eva regains the ability to use her legs.

Eva drives to Berlin to ask Alois Hoffman about his painting, which was dated to the previous year. Alois informs Eva he could not have created it because he has been blind for five years. Alois becomes disturbed when he learns the painting depicts his wife and son’s brutal deaths. After proving that his wife and son are alive, Alois angrily kicks Eva out of his house. Eva realizes that the calendar allowed Alois to regain his sight, but upon completing 24 days of sacrifices, time reset with Alois having no memory of what happened.

DECEMBER 22nd

Eva unlocks a small doll resembling her former coworker Myriam. The demon forces Eva to torment and mangle the toy, which causes Myriam to die horribly in reality.

DECEMBER 23rd

Eva unlocks another of her father’s favorite chocolates along with a small handgun. Knowing what her stepmother will do, Eva leaves the advent calendar for Agnes as a gift. Agnes throws the calendar in a fireplace. The demon appears and kills her.

Eva feeds the chocolate to her father. In another moment of clarity, Eva’s father accepts that he has to be sacrificed. Eva shoots him to honor his wish to be euthanized.

Eva calls Antoine to her house for sex as one final physical indulgence before the ordeal concludes. Eva tells Antoine the entire story about the calendar, and explains that when she eats the final candy, she’ll go back to December 1st as a paraplegic with no memory of what happened.

Eva records a warning on her cellphone for the next person who acquires the calendar. Eva locks her phone in the top compartment where she found Alois Hoffman’s painting.

DECEMBER 24th

At midnight, Eva unlocks a piece of hard candy. Antoine rushes to the roof to stop Eva from eating it. Antoine reminds Eva that the calendar’s second rule says the rules only apply until the last door, indicating Eva isn’t necessarily required to eat the final candy. To prove his theory, Antoine breaks the third rule by throwing the calendar off of the roof.

When the demon doesn’t come to kill him, Antoine points out that Eva actually has a choice. She can either eat the candy and wake up disabled back at the beginning of the month or throw it away and keep her ability to walk, although everyone who was killed will remain dead. Eva agonizes over the decision.

Having discovered her cellphone in the calendar, a frantic man shows up at Eva’s door pleading for help one year later. Eva’s door opens, with no clear indication as to whether or not she is still in her wheelchair.

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Review:

Somewhat embarrassingly, I have to admit I’m not really sure I knew what an advent calendar was until “Bad Santa.” They weren’t a part of my youth. I didn’t know anybody who ever had one either. Since 2020 though, adult advent calendars have become a staple in my home. I’m writing this with lip-licking lust as I think about the Wall Street Journal Wine, Haribo gummy candy, and whiskey advent calendars sitting seductively underneath colorful Christmas lights in the living room. Going forward, I can’t imagine another holiday season feeling as festive without 24 boozy days of sweet daily treats.

Wheelchair-bound Eva on the other hand, may never want to see another advent calendar again if she can make it through her upcoming ordeal. It will take some time for her to fully figure things out, but the calendar now in Eva’s possession comes fully stocked with murderous supernatural curses instead of chocolaty candies or tiny little toys.

You just know this antique calendar has sketchy origins because Eva got it as a birthday gift from Sophie. Sophie is one of those outgoing, flirty, bohemian best friends who, if you don’t know from having someone like her in your own life, you certainly know from other movies that employ a trendy diva type unconcerned with consequences. She’s the extroverted antithesis to Eva, a comparatively reserved ex-dancer who became a homebody after a car accident robbed her mobility. Speaking of stealing, on a recent jaunt in Germany, Sophie took a page out of Rand Peltzer’s book by pilfering the big wooden box because it looked like a little lark that’d be good for a laugh.

The two women get that laugh when they read the advent calendar’s three rules. Rule #1: If you eat one candy, you have to eat them all. Rule #2: Obey the calendar’s rules until you get to the final door. Rule #3: Don’t discard the calendar. The penalty for breaking any of these rules? “Ich,” a demonic priest whose image pops out of the box every day at midnight, will supposedly kill you.

Eva’s first hint of something strange comes with the candy behind the second door. This particular brand of chocolate happens to be her father’s favorite. He’s a hard man to get a hold of now that he’s afflicted with Alzheimer’s and living with Eva’s wicked stepmother. But something unexpected happens after Eva eats the treat. Her father calls with a brief birthday greeting on a home phone that isn’t even connected.

Eeriness of course escalates as each door reveals a new oddity, sometimes with deadly repercussions. To say too much would constitute spoilers, and “The Advent Calendar” is a macabre mystery best experienced with a blindfold, not that any expectations could possibly predict every bloody twist and terrifying turn taken over the course of Eva’s arc.

I don’t see an aching need to go deep with Pauline Kael-level critical analysis on this one. I’d rather jump straight to acclaim by simply saying, “The Advent Calendar” is “a real horror movie.” I’m sure that sounds as silly to read as it is to write. What I mean is, when you watch as many straight-to-streaming indies as I do, your mind goes into a low-budget groove where countless lookalike films blend together indistinctly. Then “The Advent Calendar” comes along and shakes your dulled imagination right out of its rut with completely captivating creepiness. With absolutely no offense intended toward Shudder, I just wasn’t expecting to see a thriller this cinematically stunning debuting at home on a small screen.

Writer/director Patrick Ridremont makes a number of impressive design decisions, starting with how wonderfully he opens up the film’s world through a vast variety of locations. Scenes take place at a public pool, in a bar, at an office, a mansion, a café, a hospital, by a pond in a park, and on a rooftop. Other sequences include underwater photography and car-mounted cameras traveling through actual traffic as opposed to having a couple of grips rock a vehicle frame in front of a green screen. By going to so many real places, “The Advent Calendar” takes us on a constantly moving tour that can make you momentarily forget you’re watching fiction. That’s an immersive effect that can’t be achieved by exclusively staging action on a studio backlot set or in someone’s sparsely furnished house.

The advent calendar itself increases this sense of authenticity. It seems too complicated for mass production, but the badass wooden box has shot straight past a Chucky doll as the horror prop I’d most love to have in my collection. It’s incredibly ornate and, no surprise given the outstanding attention to every production detail, looks like a truly haunting object that’s existed for 150 years, not a cheap prop that a contracted carpenter fabricated from store-bought wood and weathered paint.

I’m a colossal fan of “Friday the 13th: The Series.” Yet even when I watched that show as a teen, the lack of logic often nagged me regarding how some characters would have had to discover how specific curses worked with certain objects. In “The Advent Calendar,” Eva learns what the box does fairly fast. It’s fast enough that some complainers might consider it to be too much of a leap. Except it’s really only far enough to keep the story from stalling from too much exposition. Without resorting to an obligatory online research montage or person whose only purpose is to explain things, Ridremont comes up with clever ways to dole out information by having the calendar speak through several people and using other plot tightening tricks that make total sense for momentum’s flow.

Ridremont also manages the tricky timeline with skillful deftness. Eva acquires the calendar on December 3rd, so she already has to play a little catch up as soon as she gets it. Then there’s a span that skips three days for a narrative reason. 24 days could be a monumental undertaking under different circumstances. Here however, you’re regularly on pins and needles waiting and wondering what could come next without ever thinking, “How many more days are there still to go on this thing?”

VAGUE SPOILER

“The Advent Calendar” ices its exquisite cake with a fascinatingly frustrating ending akin to “Inception’s” spinning top. Then Ridremont tacks on an epilogue where, for one fleeting moment, you think the remaining question regarding what happened might get a definitive answer, only for Ridremont to twist the knife again by keeping the explanation ambiguous. It’s a devilishly delicious denial of satisfaction that tortures you twice by saying, “Part of this movie’s mystique is having to come to your own conclusion.”

END SPOILER

Eugenie Derouand is entrancing as Eva. All of the perfectly-cast supporting players are equally excellent. I could award accolades all around on both sides of the camera. It’s quicker to cut to the chase by calling “The Advent Calendar” an eerily enthralling option for Christmas-themed chills that don’t feature a killer Santa Claus, possessed toys, or elfish monsters running amok. Not only is it one of the best thrillers of the year, “The Advent Calendar” might have a prime place on the list of perennial holiday horror hits to revisit every December too.

NOTE: The movie’s French title is “Le Calendrier.”

Review Score: 90

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