Malefique

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Maléfique

August 23rd 2007 02:07

Maléfique (2002) is a French supernatural horror directed by Eric Valette from a screenplay by Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier. It’s a clever, compelling, and at times horrific, tale of incarceration, obsession and escape, and one of the best modern Euro horrors in quite a while, much better than the over-rated, silly Haute Tension (2003).

Four prisoners occupy a small cell; there’s Carrère (Gérald Laroche), who used his company to commit a fraud and was betrayed by his wife, there’s the transexual hulk Marcus (Clovis Cornillac) and his beloved “Daisy”, the retarded Pâquerette (Dimitri Rataud), who ate his six months sister, and finally the quiet intellectual, Lassalle (Philippe Laudenbach) who claims reading drove him mad and thus he killed his wife.

Geoffrey Carey as Danvers

There is a strong power play amidst the men with Marcus laying down the law, which includes sodomising Lassalle, “breast-feeding” Daisy and physically threatening Carrère. Then one night by chance Carrère finds an ancient journal hidden in a hole in the cell wall. They realize that the book was written by Danvers (Geoffrey Carey), who occupied the cell in the beginning of the last century, and contains black magic spells. The men come to the conclusion they must decipher the books contents in order to escape from the prison.

Of course when you start dabbling with the diabolical there is only Hell to pay.

Danvers attempts a dark and bloody escape

Maléfique, the French word for “malefic” which means evil or malicious; a baneful spell, operates for the most part like a piece of theatre, as nearly all the action takes place entirely within the cell, however the central performances of the four men (we rarely meet any other characters) are all so strong that they command the narrative. Only the book ending (ha, ha) scenes of the movie take place outside the prison cell, thus heightening the tale’s take on freedom and entrapment.

Claustrophobic, but never stifling, director Valette uses the setting well with an assured sense of composition and a skilled hand at creating the kind of horror tension essential for this kind of phantasmogorical descent. The book with its arcane Necromomicon symbols and hieroglyphics becomes a metaphor for the men’s internal rage and desires. In fact there is a distinct “Fruedian” take on the whole shebang. The cell is a primitive womb, Marcus and his massive mammaries and dark flowing wig, yet he is a musclehead with a temper to match, Pâquerette, who was raised in a pig pen and eats anything given the chance, including Lassalle’s watch, cockroaches, and eventually, pages from the infernal book, Danvers placenta fetish, and Carrère’s action man figure, given to him by his son (“He’ll help you escape papa …”)

Carrere contemplates his incarceration

Pâquerette also pastes together a collage made from porn magazine cuttings. A blinking eye forms in one of the vaginas, as the book and its evil intent begins to take control of the men and their surrounds. Later still Pâquerette becomes subjected to a most heinous suffering. And one of the characters, in a very nightmarish sequence, misinterprets the book’s instructions and as a result finds himself in a rapid inversion of age, finally crawling under the bunk as an infant and curling up to die as a fetus!

Philippe Laudenbach as Lassale, Gerald Laroche as Carrere and Dimitri Rataud as Daisy

The movie at times reminded me in tone and delivery to Guiseppe Tornatore’s A Pure Formality, another tale of life and death, the limbo in between, incarceration and freedom, and those trying to control it, but not strictly a horror movie. There are also shades of Paul Verhoeven’s psycho-sexual thriller The Fourth Man, in the use of shocking hallucination and carnal deviance, and there’s a black-hearted Lovecraftian atmosphere to boot.

Things always get messy with black magic

Maléfique is uncompromising and at times a little convoluted, but works with a lean, mean force and can be viewed as an extended, stylized set-piece, from the deliberate characterizations through to the nihilistic unfolding of the tale’s infernal puzzle. And when Carrère’s wife and son come to collect him at film’s end there’s been an abrupt, but ever-so-sly exit from the tomb of Psalm 666.

Director Valette is currently working on a remake of the Japanese supernatural horror Chakushin Ari (2003), to be called One Missed Call with Shannyn Sossamon, while a remake of Maléfique is already (!) in pre-production, although I’m not sure who is helming it.

Carrere, Lassale and Clovis Cornillac as Marcus

Here is the original French trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

9 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Chic Critique

August 23rd 2007 02:31

Interestingly, I had thought "it sounds like a play" before you wrote:

....operates for the most part like a piece of theatre

This looks fairly full-on.....not sure if I'd handle it - but a really well written review as always Bryn.

Cheers
CC

Comment by KylieW

August 23rd 2007 05:52

Celebrity Obsession

Wow, what a movie that sounds like. Certainly doesn't seem like a movie for the feint hearted.

Grat review as always!

Comment by Damo

August 23rd 2007 06:18

Creepy?
I am thinking SBS on a Thursday just after the Zombie movie.

Comment by Bryn

August 23rd 2007 07:59

Horrorphile

I DJ late on a Thursday night, I keep missing the zombie movies, I know there's two, but it seems the first one is generally the better of the two ...