Sheitan (Satan) (2006)

Going to see this French "horror" film was an instance of catch-up or closure, since it is one of the ones that I skipped at the last FrightFest as starting far too late in the day for old-timers like PPP.  It finally got a limited theatrical release at the ICA and we were off to see it in a flash, especially since we have a lot of time for Vincent Cassel.  I'd love to be able to report that it was a great film or even that he was the whole show, but it was absolutely dire.  I gather he befriended the young director and his cast and offered to appear, but for my money he should have stayed in bed.

Three friends -- a gormless white young man, a black Lothario, and a Vietnamese -- leave a disco with the Algerian barmaid after the first is injured in a stupid fight.  They drive off to recover at the nearby countryside chateau of a young lady they've just met which is where we meet the demented-looking Cassel as the caretaker.  At first he affords some cheap laughs with his overplaying of an inbred pervert rousing up the Deliverance-like villagers, but there is little more worth mentioning.  The grand house is filled with rooms of broken dolls (usually scary) and puppets, but the action has little to do with these until the very last -- and frankly out-of-nowhere -- scene.  Cassel also, we find, plays his very fat and very pregnant sister, very definitely not played by his real-life wife Monica Bellucci who was also meant to appear in the movie.  It turns out she was a small-screen vampire briefly viewed in a TV film being watched by gas station attendent!  If this film was meant to have put back some steam into the dying French horror genre, they have a long way to go; even the recent cop-out "High Tension" was way, way better.