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France, Belgium · 2021
1h 44m
Director Patrick Ridremont
Starring Eugénie Derouand, Honorine Magnier, Clément Olivieri, Janis Abrikh
Genre Horror, Thriller
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Eva, a former dancer now permanently confined to a wheelchair after a car accident, receives a mysterious Advent calendar from her friend. Each candy she takes from the calendar seemingly causes a miraculous event. However, as these events become dark and violent, Eva is compelled to finish the calendar in hopes of restoring her movement.
Ridremont succeeds in crunching bones and raising hell, all with a seasonal waft of cloves and corpses from behind a wishgiver’s crooked smile. It’s chilling, teeters between moral stances and is a hellish-jolly greeting that should please horror fans in the mood for merriness gone malevolent.
The New York Times by Lena Wilson
It is bizarre and dizzying and oddly beautiful in its fervor, as fantastical props and effects distract from the nonsensical plot. But this script also clumsily insists that its protagonist, a woman named Eva (Eugénie Derouand) who uses a wheelchair, is murderously obsessed with overcoming her disability.
RogerEbert.com by Peter Sobczynski
Most viewers will find themselves wishing that writer/director Patrick Ridremont had come up with a few variations on this standard theme in order to liven up this competently executed but painfully familiar genre exercise.
The Advent Calendar is a creeper of a thriller. It stalks you, sidles up and immerses the viewer in its world and its mood. This Belgian film (in French and German with English subtitles) doesn’t deliver frights or shocks so much as it serves up shivers.