The Advent Calendar: Christmas horror story a real killer

Spooky stories at Christmas might seem incongruous, but there's quite a tradition of leavening the seasonal sweetness and light with a bit of darkness.

The British have their Christmas ghost stories on page and screen (A Christmas Carol, the tales of M.R. James), for example, and the Americans have their psycho-Santa movies (Silent Night, Deadly Night).

I don't know what the similar French Christmas horror tradition is, if any, but you have to give this new film some points for novelty: I've never heard of a horror movie about an Advent calendar. Writer-director Patrick Ridremont has now filled that gap, with middling but entertaining results.

After a couple of introductory quotations (annoyingly not subtitled in English, unlike the rest of the movie), we're introduced to our heroine.

Eva (Eugenie Derouand) is a young Parisian woman whose life is not going well.

She was once a ballet dancer, but after a car accident she is now a paraplegic working in a dull insurance job where her cranky boss is about to replace her. Her father has Alzheimer's disease and lives with Eva's stepmother, who's a nasty piece of work, like a Brothers Grimm character. She won't even let Eva talk on the phone for a moment to her dad.

Apart from her dog, the only bright spot in Eva's lonely, frustrated life seems to be her lively friend Sophie (Honorine Magnier). Returning from a trip to Germany, Sophie brings Eva some Christmas gifts: food, drink and - most significantly - an ornately carved wooden Advent calendar.

Behind each day's door is a treat, but this ain't no ordinary calendar. There are some pretty strict rules that accompany it: If you start eating the sweets, you have to eat all of them, or you will be killed; and if you dump the thing, you will be killed. Who will kill you? "Ich" - "I" for the non-German speakers among us, like me - will, a monster represented (at least at first) by a pop-up that every midnight commands Eva to consume the next sweet. There's also a card with the words "To cure hurt, destroy what hurt you" written on it.

Any normal person would probably wonder what the hell was going on, and while Eva might be sceptical at first, she soon gets into the swing of things. Perhaps she simply feels she doesn't have much to lose.

Some of what happens as the days go by is good, at least for her, from increased feeling in her legs - might they recover? - to the possibility of romance to nasty fates befalling people who have wronged her. But other things are not so good. And just how much power does "Ich" have, anyway?

The "be careful what you wish for/bad things can get worse" ideas behind the story aren't new but that's not as important as what's done with them. Some of the story's events are predictable, though things do get twistier and weirder as the film progresses, not always to advantage - it can be hard at times to understand what's happening.

Magnier's film looks good and has plenty of dark atmosphere. Derouand is effective as Eva, a guarded, damaged woman whom it's not hard to sympathise with even when she is bringing about awful and bloody things.

The relationship between Eva and Sophie isn't always convincing in its details. Did Sophie know the nature of the gift she was giving Eva? Wouldn't Eva express some feelings about it - anger? resentment? bewilderment? a strange sort of gratitude? They seem to be too matter-of-fact about it all.

Even the rules about the calendar itself seem to change, though given it's a supernatural entity, I suppose it can do what it damn well pleases.

If you're a Christmas horror fan, you might find this worth a look. And it might cause second thoughts about giving - or receiving - an Advent calendar. Though it would beat getting yet another Christmas cake.