TIFF Report: Sheitan Review

Kim Chapiron’s film is a curious fusion of the old school and new, a postmodern French take on the 80’s American slasher film. “Lord, do not forgive them”, he begins, “for they know what they do.” ‘They’ in this case is a quartet of French youth getting hammered and generally behaving badly in a dance club just before Christmas. When the inevitable happens and the loudest and most boorish of the lot gets himself beaten up and thrown out the drunken and sexually frustrated crew leap at the chance to head out to the remote country home of a pretty young thing they met in the club. Hell, maybe they’ll even get some.

What they get is Joseph. A creepily friendly man with huge, dirty teeth, flyaway hair and a pregnant wife he keeps locked up in the back of the house Joseph is the obviously inbred goatherd and groundskeeper for the country estate, if you can call a ramshackle house on a dirt road in a tiny village whose residents make Joseph appear a cultural giant by comparison an estate. The city kids, not exactly paragons of good manners and tact are rudely and loudly appalled but they’ve met their match in Joseph who, while obsessively friendly, is every bit as clueless and inappropriate as the city quartet.

So what we get in the first half is a sort of demented, hugely politically incorrect, fish out of water sex comedy. Joseph tries to hook the boys up with a local cousin and takes them all skinny dipping at a local pond. Racial slurs and hillbilly humor abound. But then, just as things are starting to get a bit tired, the film takes a much darker turn. You can’t help but ask yourself why Joseph, who clearly has a violent temper and capacity for violence, is so determined to be friendly with these rude intruders into his home. The answer, of course, is that Joseph has struck a deal with the devil, the deal is coming due, and he has a need for body parts …

Significantly less bloody than many will expect and built around a group of hugely, and intentionally, unsympathetic characters Sheitan will prove quite different from what many expect and likely a difficult haul for non-genre fans. Chapiron has style and energy to spare behind the camera but his writing skills aren’t up to the same level with most characters little more than stock types who don’t develop one iota from start to finish. The key to the film’s success, then, is purely and simply Cassel. The Gallic star is magic on screen, and always has been, and he is positively magnetic here – an unpredictable mass of demented energy. This is the sort of performance that would be career making if not for the fact that Cassel already is one of Europe’s most bankable stars. The film stumbles some when Cassel is elsewhere but every moment that he is on screen, every single frame, is positively magnetic. Sometimes a star and performance can transcend a film, this is one such time.