Sheitan (2006)

The French have taken a traditional horror story arc and added their own style and flavor, resulting in a pleasing vichyssoise called Sheitan.

A bunch of 20 somethings mix it up in the club/disco scene in the big city (they call them discos in Europe, yet they feature no disco music OR bellbottoms, what gives?) and meet a hottie who invites them all to her rustic country manse to continue the party and enjoy the Christmas Holiday. They all pile into a car and make the trek to BFF (like BFE, but in France) where they encounter Vincent Cassel along the road when they have to stop the car due to a goat roadblock. Vincent plays a creepy crusty bumpkin really well.

The kids make it to the expansive house where they get a partial tour that includes a room of doll parts, from the hottie’s father’s former doll making business we are told. Vincent is called the housekeeper/groundskeeper of this abode, but I think he owns the joint, and he has a wife that is kept tucked away (for good reason, it turns out) for most of the movie.
Over dinner Vincent relates a little story about incest, a deal with the devil, and a special ‘gift’. By the end of the movie we learn that the story is about Vincent and is the reason the kiddies were brought out to the farm. Violence and mayhem ensue, and the movie ends with a most disturbing Christmas Family Portrait.

This movie had a pretty good balance of everything that makes a great horror movie: a few laughs, nudity, clever camera shots, oddball characters, and mounting tension/unease culminating in disturbing violence. The soundtrack, particularly the music in and around the front half of the movie included some great techno/fusion/trance (whatever the hell the kids call it these days). There were a number of really clever camera shots throughout the movie, including a subtle shift in camera focus, moving ones eye from the 3-way happening in the foreground to Vincent Cassel leering into the room from outside the house whilst hanging from a ledge.

The movie is packed to the gills with hell/underworld/biblical temptation and punishment imagery and symbolism. Some is a bit heavy handed, but it’s great fun to shout them out when you see them. (Eve offering people apples, dude getting frightened by a snake and Vincent chastising him and taking care of the snake, Club Styxx, a very satanic looking goat, and there’s even a plague of locusts in someone’s bed!)

The fact that Sheitan is this director’s (Kim Chapiron) first feature-length movie makes it even better. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
So to all those responsible for this bit of celluloid, I say this: “Mercy Buckets, mes amis!”
4 Georges