Eva is a former dancer who is now wheelchair-bound, forced to live a paraplegic lifestyle. While she does her best to adapt to this new lifestyle, it’s obvious that she’s struggling. On Eva’s birthday, her friend Sophie comes by and gives her a gift she bought at a German Christmas market: an Advent calendar which looks very odd, and makes Eva even more cautious of it when Sophie admits to having actually stolen it. When opening a hatch, you get a candy just like in a traditional calendar, but these are different. Once she’s opened the first hatch, she’s trapped in the Advent Calendar’s power and must open and eat every single candy on the respective day. The hatches can also only be opened after 12 at night, so yeah, there’s some obvious spooky stuff going on here. While Eva’s greatest wish is, of course, to be able to walk again, she notices that the candies from the Advent Calendar seems to be helping, but each opened hatch comes at a cost. The question is how much Eva will be willing to sacrifice in order to get her greatest wish on the Advent Calendar’s last hatch on the 24th…
The Advent Calendar (original title: Le Calendrier) is a French horror film from 2021, written and directed by Patrick Ridremont. It’s a nice little holidays themed horror movie, with the focus being on a cursed Advent Calendar (we already have a ton of “evil Santa“ horror movies, so it’s nice to see something a bit different for a change). Our protagonist Eva, being in the vulnerable position she is, often finds herself going through all kinds of degrading behavior, especially at her job with her boss being a sleazy dick who just wants to replace her with someone who has functioning legs. And to top it all, her replacement even has a mocking attitude towards her. When these two gets their comeuppance, it feels rather satisfying, and here is where the story manages to mix the “dream come true“ with the “nightmare come true“ scenario: some of the hatches she opens, actually bring forth good things. Once the supernatural events come into place, it’s gradual enough to be written off as mere coincidences, until it becomes obvious to Eva that they’re not. Then there’s the hatches that brings forth…horrible things, more like sacrifices for what she’s receiving. It’s one of those stories where you can understand that the protagonist wants to keep going when she believes she will eventually reach her final destination, her biggest wish of being able to walk again. Then it all depends on whether or not Eva thinks that the way towards this goal was worth it in the end. A classic “careful what you wish for“ story, but wrapped together in an interesting narrative.
The cursed object itself, the Advent Calendar, looks really cool too! It resembles something that could’ve been displayed in an occult museum, designed in a way that makes it look both like an old antique but also like something made by people who really intended to conjure something from the depths of hell itself. It’s an object that isn’t made to look overtly scary, but it’s just uncanny enough to feel off. Which works perfectly in this movie. And like someone who used to enjoy the old-fashioned traditional advent chocolate calendar during the holiday seasons, I could reminisce a bit about the excitement of opening a new hatch. Yes, back then it was only a tiny piece of chocolate, but damn, we children of the 80’s weren’t very hard to please…
The Advent Calendar is one of those typical “cursed object“ horror movies, which does inevitably play on certain tropes and cliché’s but also delivers an interesting enough premise and a solid story and pacing to keep you engaged.
Writer and director: Patrick Ridremont
Original title: Le calendrier
Country & year: France/Belgium, 2021
Actors: Eugénie Derouand, Honorine Magnier, Clément Olivieri, Janis Abrikh, Cyril Garnier, Vladimir Perrin, Jérôme Paquatte, Laura Presgurvic, Isabelle Tanakil, Jean-François Garreaud, Olivier Bonjour
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt12496706/
