The Advent Calendar (2021)

The Advent Calendar takes a cozy, nostalgic piece of Christmas tradition and twists it into something dreadfully intimate, where each little door feels like a dare you can’t un-open. Patrick Ridremont builds an eerie seasonal atmosphere that’s all candlelit warmth on the surface and creeping doom underneath, and the film keeps tightening its grip with nasty, satisfying chills rather than cheap noise. Eugénie Derouand anchors it with a performance that makes the horror land emotionally, not just viscerally, so the suspense feels personal even when it turns brutal. If you want your holiday viewing to be comforting, this isn’t it—but if you’re in the mood for a dark, wintry thriller with a wicked premise and a mean streak, it’s a gift you’ll be glad you opened.

The Advent Calendar is clearly trying to mash up a Christmas countdown gimmick with a nasty, moral-choice horror story about desperation and consequence, and the setup is strong enough to pull you in. The problem is it leans hard on the familiar “cursed object” playbook without finding many genuinely fresh twists, so once you get the idea, you can feel the film straining to keep escalating. The pacing can be uneven and the writing sometimes jumps through logic hoops to get to the next shock, which makes the later turns—and especially the ending—land more frustrating than chilling for some viewers. If you like mean-spirited supernatural horror with a grim fairy-tale vibe and can forgive messy plotting for atmosphere and a committed lead performance, you’ll probably have a decent time; if you need tight rules, clean storytelling, and a satisfying payoff, this may waste your evening.