The Advent Calendar

The Advent Calendar

the advent calendar still

Our second episode of the holiday season is a creepy take on a cherished Christmas tradition around the world. But these advent calendars aren’t filled with chocolate. They’re filled with EVIL. But also chocolate. Both evil and chocolate. And holiday cheer, of course. Enjoy!

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The Advent Calendar (2021)

Ep 325, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, it is that time of year, Craig. Christmas time. Yeah, like my third favorite holiday . I like the season though. It’s a really nice season. It just comes on the heels of my two favorites.

But it’s a nice excuse to get together with family and do things and watch Christmas horror movies, of which there seemed to be a ton. I know. 

Craig: We used to complain. We used to be like, well, we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. And uh, now we, my God, we could do them year round. Like they’re coming out like crazy.

I attribute it to streaming. I think that since we have all of these streaming services, we are. Being exposed, first of all, I think that it allows for a lot more opportunity for, mm-hmm. up and coming filmmakers. It’s so accessible, whereas, and I’m nostalgic for these days too, but whereas we used to have to go to the video store and, you know, peruse through things and probably a lot of things would slip through the cracks.

Oh, sure. Um, now, you know, it’s all right at your fingertips. Um, gosh, I’m watching stuff every day. 

Todd: Well, and I think streaming probably, you know, allows producers to test the market. You know, I would imagine that at one point there was an idea that maybe there isn’t a huge call for Christmas horror films.

And certainly, you know, when every movie more or less, Had to hit the movie theater first and sort of justify its existence, you know, for a very general and large audience. You know, there’s that silent night, deadly night, which caused a lot of controversy back when it came out and, you know, it was almost more of a novelty.

And maybe now with the streaming services, you know, Netflix has done its numbers and been like, Hey, a lot of people watch these Christmas horror movies make, you know, 20 more . Right. You know? Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. And also maybe I, I’m mistaken, but 10 years ago I feel. You really had to kind of go out of your way to find foreign films except for, except for some that made big splashes at, uh, festivals or whatever. You know, there were always a few every year that would make a big splash at some festival and, and would get an American release. But other than that, if you wanted to see foreign films, you really kind of had to seek them out.

Something like this, like what we’re watching today, um, I doubt very much that I would’ve come across if it weren’t for the magic of streaming.

Todd: you’re absolutely right. And that’s one of the, it’s one of the joys of streaming, right? Yeah. The movie that we’re doing today might be our first Belgian film, um, that we’ve ever done. It’s called The Advent Calendar, and it’s from 2021. It, it does seem like just the last two years there’s been a particular explosion.

I know you sent me a list of ones and most of the ones on, I would say about half of that list were from 2021 or 2022. Interestingly enough, the one that you picked is the one I would’ve picked because the premise seems so interesting. Essentially, this quadriplegic woman whose friend, uh, Sophie, gives her a advent calendar on her birthday, and it’s three days into December, I suppose.

So she kind of opens the first three. And, uh, it turns out this, this, this calendar is, is sinister. Uh, the gifts that it gives are more than meets the eye . 

Craig: I mean, this is a really classic trope in film and literature that, you know, um, some sort of supernatural force offers you some great rewards, like your heart’s greatest desire.

Mm-hmm. , there’s a price to pay. I, I mean, you see that in all of those, the devil and, you know, the devil, a Tom Walker, the Devil, a Daniel Webster . Um, but then you also see it like in the Monkeys Paw. It’s not like it’s unique. Regard, but I’ve never seen it done with an advent calendar and when we were, you know, looking at, uh, Christmas movies to do this year.

I love a good killer Santa movie. I do, and we may do one or two, uh, this year, but. I just thought, you know what, I’ve never seen a horror movie focused around Advent or an Advent 

Todd: calendar. A killer Advent calendar. Yeah, that’s pretty new. . 

Craig: And I just thought, you know, that’s, that’s clever. Why not? Yeah. Um, it’s a, a corner of the market that hasn’t been touched yet, and I thought, you know, there’s probably a lot of possibilities with this.

And, uh, it is, uh, advent now, uh, the advent season started. Last weekend, advent is the, um, beginning of the liturgical year, uh, in most, uh, Christian denominations, including my own. And so it seemed appropriate. , 

Todd: it’s like our countdown right at the beginning. Uh, leave it to the Belgians to make a movie about advent calendars, since they always make such great chocolate that ends up in these things, Belgians and Germans.

You know, maybe it just occurred to me that some people don’t know what an advent calendar. I know when I was a kid, it was one of my favorite things of the Christmas season, and I still have, you know, I still go out and get an advent calendar. Actually, interestingly enough, all the advent calendars I ever had were German, uh, and they were chocolate.

And so you just get this, I don’t know, what do you call it? Just like a thing. Like a, it’s bigger than a size of a piece of paper, a little thick, thicker, and it all, it has doors on it, and each door is numbered from one to 25. So you’re supposed to count the days from the beginning of the holiday season of December 1st, all the way up to Christmas day, the 25th.

And usually with those advent calendars, you know, you, you open up a door and there’ll be a piece of chocolate and you can eat. And so just every day you get a little treat with a different shape or something. And then on the 25th, maybe it’s like double size. It’s pretty simple, but you can also like, um, you can get ones that have little toys and um, or, you know, trinkets.

Lego makes them. Actually, my mom’s apparently giving me a beer advent calendar this year. So I get a can of beer every day. And. Awesome. . 

Craig: That’s funny. Our, uh, our friend Heather last year gave me a Halloween advent calendar, which, you know, oxymoron. But, um, every day that I would open it, it would be a little trinket of some little monster or like a little cute.

Uh, Michael Myers or a little cute Jason Voorhees. . 

Todd: It was fun. That, that is awesome. . 

Craig: It was really cool. I’ll have to send you 

Todd: pictures. I took pictures of them. Okay. I love that. . We should just do an advent calendar for every month. Right. So this is Abelian film. I think it takes place in Belgium, uh, or France.

Um, they are speaking French. This girl’s friend, uh, Sophie, uh, gives her this calendar from Germany and it is not one of these little chocolate advent calendars. It’s just kind of light and made of paper. It is a. Large, beautifully detailed, uh, box. Mm-hmm. that opens up in the front and everything I was getting, you know, for the story, like you said, I was getting monkeys paw vibes, you know, from this box.

I was getting kind of like, like hell razor sort of like puzzle box type vibes, you know? Yeah. I 

Craig: read something that compared it to Jumanji. I thought that was kind of a good comparison. Oh 

Todd: yeah. I, I don’t know how I feel about this movie. I, I felt it got a little repetitive and a little boring at 

Craig: times. I didn’t find it boring, but I, what I did, I took so many notes on this movie.

I have like three pages of notes, whereas I usually have one, so don’t let me get too bogged down in the plot. But it’s really plot heavy because, because you’ve. 24 days of opening this calendar. So basically 24 things have to happen. Like . 

Todd: I do remember being on like day, uh, eight or nine and I, and it hit me.

I’m like, oh my God, we’ve got like . Yes, I know at least like 12 more of these to go. And I was just like, That was the point at which I started to feel a little anxious. And then one of them, she opens, it sort of skips her like three or four days and I was, I was, let that happen again. , 

Craig: there are a couple, they did, they did a couple of clever things to skip some days.

First of all, they had her not get it until her birthday, so she could open the first three at the same time. And I have found that always to be true. I have never like started an advent calendar on day one like you. Started right late . So you get to open the first several, which is exactly what she does.

So we get, you know, kind of to skip those days. And you’re right. At some point she opens one, the candies will always kind of give a little bit of a suggestion of what it’s gonna be, a little hint. Um, and, uh, she opens a clock one and she eats it. And then immediately she looks at her phone and she’s missed like 20 calls and there’s like 15 messages and she’s, I apparent.

Lost like four days and I was like, oh, thank God. , . 

Todd: That’s exactly what I felt,

Craig: but I did. Whereas it was kind of repetitive. I did find it clever and it did a good job of kind of building dread because things got more and more dire. As it went on, it, it starts out relatively innocent and she kind of is getting these little rewards, good things. Um, yeah, like for example, on the first day, one of the things that she, it’s her birthday and, uh, she, we had already seen that she had called her dad and she’s got this bitch of a stepmom.

Mm. The Eva is the girl, and by the way, she’s paraplegic, not quadriplegic. Oh, sorry. God. I guess I might as well say she used to be a dancer, I think a professional dancer. Mm-hmm. . Um, which makes, you know the fact that she has been in an accident and is paraplegic. Even more tragic because it takes away from her the thing that she loves.

But anyway, she calls the stepmom and says, it’s my birthday. I, I wanted to talk to my dad. And she’s like, why? He doesn’t even know who you are. And, and she, apparently the dad has Alzheimer’s and, um, the stepmom won’t even let her. Talk to him, but she gets this little candy and she tells Sophie, oh, these were my dad’s favorite.

And Sophie says, well, you should eat it and uh, maybe it’ll make you feel closer to your dad. So she does eat it. And then later that night she gets a phone call and it’s her dad. And I’m like, oh, that’s sweet. And maybe it’s a coincidence, or it’s probably the advent calendar. But then she tells Sophie about it the next day and she says he called.

On a disconnected phone, like Yeah. The phone isn’t even in 

Todd: service. It’s like a landline phone. Yeah. Right. They’re not using anymore. 

Craig: Right. So obviously something is, something strange is going on. Right. And there’s a, like when it’s first introduced, like you said, it’s super ornate. It’s, it’s, it’s frankly very beautiful.

Uh, the craftmanship of it is beautiful. It, it’s a little bit dark. It’s kind of got some kind of dark. Pagan like imagery. Um, and on the back there’s a German inscription that says, or dump it and I’ll kill you. . 

Todd: Yeah, . It’s very sinister. This advent call right 

Craig: from the bat, right? Well, yeah. And um, when she opens it up, the first few candy wrappers have like rules on the inside.

And gosh, what are they? I wrote them all 

Todd: down. It says, uh, the first one says the calendar contains candy. If you eat one, eat them all, or I’ll kill you. Uhhuh. Uh, rule two, respect all rules until you open the last door or I’ll kill you. And number three, dump it or I’ll kill you. And all of this is written in German, and she doesn’t speak German, but her friend does.

And. Kind of cool actually, that she has to have her friend translate it. And she says to her friend, sounds grim. And her friend says, well, Germans are grim.

Which is funny because it’s true . 

Craig: But, uh, and this, those of you who. Don’t know. This is not typical of an advent calendar. An advent calendar is no , you know, a religious kind of celebratory type thing. , um, it’s kinda like a New Year’s Eve countdown, frankly, Uhhuh, but it’s celebratory. There’s none, none of this weird stuff.

The inscription, I think, has a signature, it’s like e, like ich. Mm-hmm. . And the first night when midnight strike. Like an alarm goes off in the box, but it, it, it’s talking, it sounds like a recording, like an old recording and it says it’s midnight time to open the box or something like that. And this creepy guy kinda like, like a paper doll type thing.

Todd: Looks like a priest or something. It look like a priest. That’s what I was 

Craig: thinking. It pops up at midnight every night and on the back it’s, it’s labeled ich. So apparently this. The thing. Mm-hmm. and, and when she eats the candies the first time, we get some kind of weird, surreal glimpses in like tones of fusia or purple and it, it’s really surreal and you can’t really tell what you’re looking at, but it at least kind of has the figure of a man.

Mm-hmm. wearing maybe some kind of, Mask or, or something. It’s, as it turns out, it is the demonn or spirit or whatever it is that’s attached to this box. But, uh, they do a, I thought the film did a good job of teasing you with it before giving you a, a, a true reveal where you get to see it all it’s 

Todd: glory.

Later on, now that you mention, you talk about the demon attached to the box. Now I’m also thinking of the DIC box. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t remember what the name of that movie was, but it even was similarly kind of opened up, right? It opens up like, uh, two doors in the front opened up to reveal, you know, the goodies and stuff inside.

And I guess the notion is that there is a demonn attached to this box here. Yeah, it’s the one kind of. You know, fulfilling the wishes or something. Sort of a genie, A genie in a box kind of thing, I suppose. But it’s all very vague. Like we’re never gonna know, even at the end of this movie, we’re never gonna know the source of this.

We’re never gonna have a backstory. We’re we’re real? I, unless I missed something. No, I don’t 

Craig: think so. I don’t think it’s ever explained. Fun. Bit of trivia since you brought it up. Uh, that movie, the DIC Box is based kind of on a true story, like the, the box itself, the haunted box. Exists. And uh, when that movie came out, the box that it was based on was in the possession of a man who lives in my hometown.

Yeah. random, I think. I think he still has it. I don’t think he lives here anymore, but he’s a 

Todd: true believer as well. Yeah. He said weird things happened to him when he got it, but, uh, he, he believes in a lot of that stuff, so it’s really an interesting connection. It’s a shame. The movie wasn’t that great, , man.

You could do some really great things with that concept. And the movie was like, oh, like super disappointing. But anyway, um, she’s, she is unable to go ahead. The, the, there’s like a little key in there and every one of these boxes, uh, has a little lock. She has to open with the same key. And, uh, when she tries to open that fourth one, it’s jammed, she says.

And then, like you said, at midnight, the box kind of wakes up. There’s like a little, almost like a little recording inside that just repeats over and over and over again. In German, of course, it’s midnight, open the door, it’s midnight, open the door. And that, like you said, that thing pops up. Uh, and then she’s able to, The next thing.

So it’s entirely feasible that this could be mechanical. Like if there really is like a little clock in there and, uh, until that guy pops up, you know, these, each door, you know, won’t unlock. It’s possible. I, I found that notion charming. I did say, you know, it wasn’t like, uh, entirely just like supernaturally controlled.

And it adds to the mystery, like, who in the world would make something like this? Mm-hmm. . And, uh, she asked her friend where she got it, you know, how, what she paid for it or whatever. And her friend’s like, um, I don’t know how much it cost because I stole it. Uh, she literally stole it from this shopkeeper, I suppose.

Craig: Yeah. A, a German Christmas market or something. 

Todd: Yeah. Which are also cute. I do enjoy that part of the season, going to Christmas markets. Yeah. 

Craig: I, I do too. We just had one, like a craft show here. Last weekend, I didn’t go. My mom went, she said it was cute. Anyway, when, when, when she opens the rules, um, she also want the last candy that she opens that night has another inscription on the rapper that I feel like is important.

It says to cure, hurt, destroy what hurt you, and that comes into. 

Todd: Later on. Mm-hmm. . And that’s a candy she doesn’t eat right away, right? Yeah. It’s a little Jesus. It’s white, unlike the others. The 

Craig: others are all chocolate and, but that, that one that she doesn’t eat, um, the note in the rapper says, and, and Sophie reads this out loud, uh, Jesus said to the cripple a rise and walk.

And then once Sophie realizes what she said, she, she kind of is like, oh, 

Todd: sorry, . 

Craig: It’s a little on the nose, but Yeah. But she doesn’t eat that one. She saves it for a while. 

Todd: Yeah. That’s her first indication that, I mean, that’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, ? Yeah. But 

Craig: it still, it still could be coincidence.

It could be up until now. Um, I mean, obviously we’re watching this movie week. No, something is gonna be scary, but in the realm of reality, it could 

Todd: be. One other thing the movie does is it kind of shows her life as a paraplegic and, uh, it seems like at every turn she’s really being, uh, discriminated against or looked down upon.

Yeah. One of the opening scenes is she’s swimming. And, uh, a guy’s real is coming onto her and calling her cute. And she asked him to fetch his, her chair for her. And, uh, he’s a little taken aback and surprised, and he does so, but then all of a sudden it doesn’t seem like he’s so interested in her anymore.

See, I didn’t 

Craig: get that. I got like, I think that he was taken aback a little bit, but it’s not like he recoiled in horror when he realized no, that she was the paraplegic. It, it seemed more to me that she was projecting that. And, and you think so? Yeah, I, I can, I can’t relate cause I’ve never been through anything like that.

I can only speculate, but I can speculate that if something like that happened to me, I would be angry. And bitter and a little bit self pity. Right. And I think that she is as well, because you’re right, the, the movie does make it out that pe like her boss, you know, makes comments about how he knew she couldn’t take care of business and her condition and Oh yeah.

Todd: He’s really mean. Like, uh, she, she, uh, she’s like selling insurance or something and he’s called her into his office and said, you know, you’re, you’re falling behind or whatever. That, and I might have to cut your salary. And, uh, she says, you, you get a grant. You know, which we presume is like some kind of extra help in order to be able to hire her.

And he says, yeah, well that extra bathroom cost a fortune . So I, I. Took that to mean that he had to install like special accommodations. Sure. In the bathroom for her. And so it’s like he throws that in her face, you know, like, what an asshole, this guy. And later he actually hires a woman who is clearly, he’s training to replace her.

Right. Well, 

Craig: making her train her own 

Todd: replacement. Yeah. You know, and I’ve heard about that, but yeah, God, that’s 

Craig: doey and, and that woman says something to her like, you’re so brave. I just couldn’t do it. And I know people say things like that and they have good intentions, but come on. Yeah. So, so yeah. You know, people are very kind of condescending to her and she does seem to be a little bit self pitying.

And all the while I’m think. You again, in her shoes, I would probably feel the same way, but she is perfectly capable, you know? Yeah. Like she’s, she’s fine. She gets around fine. She’s certainly capable of selling insurance, you know, like Yeah. The fact that nothing to do with that wheelchair has nothing to do with her ability to sell insurance.

Yeah. But yes, I mean, the movie kind of makes it goes out of its way. to show how miserable she is being paraplegic and it, and it kind of has to do that because if she weren’t, then she wouldn’t have the motivation necessary to do what she does. For the rest of the movie. 

Todd: Exactly. You’re right. It is very important that we feel that she is miserable and the, the movie’s very plot heavy, as you said, and so it just kind of has to do that through plot.

It’s gotta do it through situations and things that she encounters. And you’re right, I feel like. I felt like it just a little bit on the edge of going out of its way, , you know what I mean? I, I, I felt like there was maybe one or two too many of those. Like I got it. I mean, really, does she encounter this like every single day?

I don’t know. Maybe people do, and maybe that’s just my ignorance. Her friend invites her out. On a date. Uh, she’s got a guy who’s invited her to dinner somewhere and said she, he would pay. And so she’s like, why don’t you come along with me now? This is something women do, right? Like, is it like the first time you meet a guy, you’re not quite sure, so you might bring a friend along kind of thing.

I got the sense that might have been it or also that her friend just wasn’t serious about this dude, so she just thought they could both kind of take advantage of him for a a fun dinner. 

Craig: Yeah, I think that was the case. But I think, you know, often women do that and it seems like, um, the two of them, the two women were only planning on meeting.

A guy, but he brought along a friend too. Mm-hmm. And I would think that that would kind of be more common, like yeah, if, if a man, a stranger, I mean, it would be different if it was somebody that you already knew, but if a stranger asked you out, it might be wise to say, that sounds fun. I’ll bring a friend.

Do you have a friend you could bring, you know, safety and numbers? Mm-hmm. . Um, and the guy, the original guy that they’re meeting, his name is Boris and he’s a douchebag. Yeah. Cheap suit and, um, he just, I don’t even remember the things he says. He just makes terrible, insulting sexist ableist jokes. Yeah. Um, but the guy that he brought, Thomas seems nice and it seems like Eva ha is a little bit interested in Thomas and the two men go up to the bar.

And Sophie says, what do you think? And Eva was like, what do you mean about Thomas? I don’t know. He, he seems nice and Sophie’s like just a second. And she goes to the bar and she’s talking to them. And it seems like Sophie and Thomas are both kind of looking Eva’s way. Uhhuh. And then, Sophie comes back and she’s like, he wants to have a drink.

And Eva’s like, oh, I don’t know. I’m not really, I’m really tired. And Sophie says, not with you, with me. Like . That so surprised me cuz Sophie seems like she seems like a nice friend and it seemed like she was trying to set Eva up with a nice guy. But no, she was taking the nice guy for herself and dumping Eva off on Bo.

Todd: I’ve always felt Sophie had a little bit of an edge to her. You know, I did kind of question her, uh, well, obviously in this scene as well, right? It was kind of, kind of interesting. So she does, she drop, she dumps her off on douchebag Boris, who, they’re in a car like, I mean, he’s like snorts some coke before he goes into the car.

I’m like, oh God, please tell me like they’re not going somewhere else. And uh, clearly she’s just driving. He’s just supposed to be driving her home, but she’s falling kind of asleep in the car and nodding. And she wakes up a little bit to find that he’s taking advantage of her. Yeah, it’s gross. He’s on her.

Yeah. It’s really disgusting and it’s filmed very up close. And actually a lot of the movie seems to be filmed. Sort of like a what? A close up with a wide angle lens sort of feel to it. Very claustrophobic, very kind of in your face and moving around and you know, she can’t feel, he’s like, oh, well I thought she wanted it.

And she’s like, I have no feeling down there. She 

Craig: had fallen. Yeah, she had fallen. And yeah, I guess he had pulled over and was messing with her. I, I don’t wanna get too graphic, but I mean, he is male. He is physic, he’s sexually molesting her when Yeah, when she wakes up and she pushes, she pushes him off. Um, and then he, he tries to force her to perform oral sex.

It’s, and it’s, it’s really uncomfortable. Um, yeah, it’s not terribly, terribly graphic, but. , um, it’s very tense because I’m, it’s violent. It’s violent, and I’m really worried about this woman because she really doesn’t have a lot of ability to protect herself or to flee. Yeah. So when he got out, he eventually gets out of the driver’s side and comes around.

I was afraid he was going to pull her out and rape her, which would’ve been worse, but it’s bad enough that he pulls her out, throws her into the street, tosses her wheelchair out, and just leaves. 

Todd: Yeah, from the street dumps her by the side of the road. Huh. And then interesting this, this was an interesting point of the calendar.

She screams out at him, drop dead, and the Eek has popped up from the calendar back in her apartment, and the door has sort of swung open by itself and out rolls a little toy car that looks just like Boris’s car, and she has a dog. The dog comes up and sniffs at the car and then starts nudging it around and biting it, and we see it’s like a voodoo car.

You know, this exact same thing is happening to Boris’s car down the road. All of a sudden it’s getting smashed up and spinning around and then just, I guess, crashes and you know, into pieces basically. And she gets a 

Craig: call the next morning that he’s. Dead. Mm-hmm. , the rules of the box are a little tenuous, frankly.

because it can do things on its own. Uh, as we just saw, like now. Sure. Maybe it’s acting on her desires, um, in, in some way, but it can, it can kind of do things on its own. And also one of the rules. If you eat one candy, you have to eat them all or you’ll die. Well, she doesn’t eat them all, so. 

Todd: Yeah. But you know, I guess if you think about it, like it doesn’t say when she has to eat them

Right. But, but she, there, 

Craig: there are at least two that she doesn’t eat at all. Somebody. Oh, that’s true. Somebody eats them. That’s another one that’s coming up. She meets Sophie in the park and they talk about. But they, she sees this guy, this cute guy. He’s handsome, but he’s also cute cuz he is wearing earphones and he is singing out loud and he is a terrible singer.

But, but that’s, that’s charming. That’s charming. Right. And, uh, so she sees him then, and then that night. Her prize from the calendar is a little heart, and she doesn’t eat it right away. She goes to the park the next day at a little cafe and that same guy shows up. He orders first, then the waitress comes to her.

She orders the same thing that he ordered, and the waitress brings hers, but sets the tray down to like take another drink to somebody else. And Eva drops that little heart in this cute. Wine and as immediate, the second he takes a sip of his wine, he immediately looks up and locks eyes with her. Mm-hmm.

And then he comes over and Sophie had said when they were in the park, you should go talk to that guy. And she said, Um, what am I supposed to say? Hey, are you a nurse? Cuz if you are, you can wash my private parts. Uh, and when the guy comes over to her, he’s like, Hey, I’m a nurse. I can wash your private parts.

Whoa. I have no idea why I said that. I just couldn’t not 

Todd: say it. He’s under like a spell for like a split second or something. And, and she doesn’t seem to mind ? No, because cuz now she’s understanding the box is magical. Right? Like, for sure. Uh, and I, I, I did wonder though, why did she not eat the chocolate?

What gave her the idea to drop it in that wine to, to so fl the rules like that? I, I don’t think. In that situation would’ve thought that was acceptable. I would’ve been worried. But she seems to know exactly what to do. So I do wonder if at some point, you know, maybe this demonn is kind of giving her knowledge or kind of imbuing her with kind of, you know, putting her under a spell from time to 

Craig: time.

Well, I don’t think that she’s put together yet that. Gosh, I don’t know. I mean, I, I don’t, I don’t think at this point she’s put together that Boris died because of something that happened with No, 

Todd: no, that’s for sure. So I, I, so 

Craig: I think that she may think that there, well, she knows that there’s something weird.

Uh, about the box because her dad calling on the disconnected line, um, and she’s even talked to people about it and, and she eventually talks this guy, William. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , they become close like they are dating and, and she tells them that weird things have had, she doesn’t tell him that she gave him. A loved one, and then he fell in love with her.

But she tells ’em weird things are happening and they speculate that maybe the, the candies are laced, you know, maybe they’re like laced with, uh, ecstasy or acid or, or some hallucinogen. Oh, 

Todd: that’s true. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Maybe she hasn’t quite put it together so she knows 

Craig: something. She knows something’s going on, but, uh, I don’t think that she understands the danger yet.

Todd: Yes, for 

Craig: sure. But she figures it out soon though. It doesn’t take. 

Todd: This was ironically when I was like, oh my God, we are on day six. Are we gonna have to go through 19 more of these ? And it’s already, you know, I don’t know, a quarter of the way through the movie. And, uh, one thing that we didn’t mention was that Boris is, um, This sort of this douche bag.

He’s like bragging about how much money he makes on the stock market and he has this app that he uses to invest and he says, Hey, I just made like 457 euro I’ll, I could give it to you. Just as he’s blabbering on and talking. And after his death, she gets a message on her phone and that she. She has like an account with this investment thing and 457 has been dropped in there, so that’s kind of weird too.

Right. Anyway, thankfully, right as I was thinking it, see I think the boss really works, uh, right as I was thinking it, uh, she calls William, she explains that she thinks something’s going on because she’s waiting for the next door. This midnight, uh, and when it opens, this is the clock sh the, the chocolate shaped like a clock.

So she eats it. Uh, and like you said, uh, her phone wakes her up and it turns out she’s eaten. Three or four more Uhhuh, and it’s already day 10. And she gets a call from her boss, where were you? And he fires her, uh, for not showing up at work. And she calls William and she explains, she thinks something’s going on, maybe it is indeed drugs.

But then she notices these rappers that are in front of her, if the chocolate, she’s apparently eaten, didn’t remember it over these last day. They piece together to form the image of a logo, which she recognizes from the investment app as like a company she can invest in or a fund or whatever. So she just drops.

That money into there and it immediately earns like 9 cents. So, yeah, so this time she, she puts a book on that popup thing so that when it turns midnight, that thing can’t pop up and the box is clearly sort of agitated, I suppose. And it gets the attention of her dog. Mm-hmm. and her dog comes over. And like you said, it’s sort of like, here’s where the rules get weird again.

It opens up and. There’s a bone inside and the dog, you know, it’s a little candy bone or treat or something. Yes. So the dog takes the bone and there’s skulls on the walls on the inside of that chamber, which I, I was really looking, I found myself, especially after this, really looking at the design of the chamber.

You know, the little room or whatever that each of these little treats come out of, because it was quite intricate and quite interesting. And some of them I thought gave little clues. And this one definitely that. Poisonous. Well, chocolate, I suppose is poisonous to dogs anyway, right. Uhhuh, . I think the next scene we see is the dog’s kind of puking.

No, I I don’t think the dog 

Craig: pukes it. The, the, the box lets it out of the. Really? Yeah. Like you see the, the outside door swing open and the dog goes out the box. Also, it didn’t just get the, it called to the dog, like, 

Todd: Marvin. Oh, I didn’t catch that part. . And uh, 

Craig: and the dog ate the tree. And then the front door swung open and the dog went out and she gets up in the morning and she hears the dog whimpering or something and, and she notices that it’s outside, so she opens it up, but it’s whole muzzle.

Is drenched in blood. 

Todd: Oh, oh, I didn’t catch this. Okay. She, she cleans 

Craig: them up. You see, she’s got a big bo uh, basin full of water, and it’s just all stained red cuz she’s cleaning up the dog and she pulls something either out of its teeth or out of its fur and it’s a little. I don’t know, a little charm.

Shrink char, a little charm that she recognizes as her bosses. I don’t remember if he wore it on his lapel or mm-hmm. , uh, on his 

Todd: tie or his, around his neck, I think on a little chain. Yeah. Yeah. The implication here is that, The dog went out and killed the boss. Right, right, 

Craig: right. And she calls the boss and she just gets an answering service.

And this is when she starts putting everything together, I feel like. And she mm-hmm. , she kind of puts together, you know, that classic kind of detective board that you see in all these movies I 

Todd: know. Where people just suddenly like start writing on, like, writing on their table post-Its pulling out a post-it note, like, like they can’t remember any of this stuff unless they like spread it all out and label it deliberately,

But it’s helpful for her, I guess. I think it’s this at this point, because she’s kind of like dealing with the dog and, and throwing away the stuff that she used to clean him that she notices pieces of the car in, uh, trash can. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Piece of this car, it looked like Boris’s car. And like you said, she lays it all out.

Um, but she also lays that, uh, One chocolate that she hasn’t eaten yet and just labels it with a question mark. And, uh, it gets to day 11 and it’s another white Jesus chocolate, which says, Jesus said to the cripple, arise and walk. So now she has two of them in front of her and I’m thinking, oh, two chocolates, two legs.

Hmm. . And she decides to eat both. Uh, and her legs start to twitch and she conv, VULs. And, you know, I’m thinking like, oh, okay, like this calendar is helping her , you know, it’s, it’s this monkeys paw sort of thing, but so far everything it’s done for her. I mean, yeah, it’s terrible that people are dying, but they were all douchebag assholes who were mean to her.

Right. You know, none of this was that ironic, like, oh, you know, you’re, you got a million dollars, but that’s because your favorite aunt died and this is your inheritance, you know, kind of situation. Right. Only knowing that this was a horror movie did. I realize we’re probably gonna get to that point where it’s gonna get more difficult.

But, but that started to go through my mind right now cuz I’m like, oh my God is, she’s gonna walk now, so what’s gonna be next? Like, that’s the ultimate gift she can get. Right. But it’s not, it’s kind of a taste of it. Yes. She also, I think kind of blacks. Right. She does. She blacks 

Craig: out and they uh, she wakes up in the hospital and William, who is a nurse, is there, and he says they found you in the street, clutching the box, and you, you wouldn’t let go of the box.

And again, they kind of speculate about what’s going on, but she kind of realizes she has kind of these flashes. that she was walking, uh, when she’s getting like an MRI or something, she has these flashes and other, something else happens in the, in the hospital. Like there’s a, a woman chanting, and I don’t know the woman, it looks like the woman is kind of menacing her.

Um mm-hmm. , like, I have to stop this evil or something. But then Eva pulls out the, Candy and it’s a chocolate host, a a chocolate communion host. Mm-hmm. . Um, and she gives it to the woman, and I think the woman, does a woman die? I’m 

Todd: not sure she goes away. I didn’t know what happened to her after that. I, I really wasn’t clear on that point.

Yeah, I I would you think the woman was like, uh, sort of like a mentally tapped into the box and like recognized it as evil? It seemed like it to destroy it or something. So this, this was kind of the way of like getting her to shut 

Craig: up and leave, right? I think so. And, and then we, we constantly get these updates.

I mean, she’s making bank on this app. Like at this point we’re up to door 14 and she already has 14,000 euros. Um, but Door 14 is another after eight bar, which is her. Favorite candy. So she, she knows at this point it’s got something to do with her dad. So she visits her dad, finds out that 

Todd: his, she eats it, and she was waiting by the phone.

You know, for a phone call, that’s what she’s first expecting. And when she doesn’t get that, she decides to visit him outright and you, you have to notice cuz it’s made very clear like the, when she does open that and pull out that after eight bar, there is a very ornate skull on the inside of that door.

That’s when I thought, okay, this is gonna start to get sinister. Maybe this visit with her dad isn’t gonna go so well as the nice, cheery phone call that she got. I thought the movie was very good at telegraphing. You know, possibility. 

Craig: Well, yeah, but she, when she does visit, She has, I don’t know if she ate it, but she has one of those candies, one of the after ate things cuz uh, she finds out, the stepmom, tells her that she’s selling the dad’s house.

And oh, you’re right. She’s, she’s gonna put the dad in a nursing home. And so, uh, Eva goes to her dad who is, um, in the late throws of dementia. He doesn’t seem. There at all, but she feeds him this candy and Oh, you’re right. She feeds him Instead. It’s like he comes back, like his mind clears momentarily, but he says to her, and how he knows this, I have no idea, but he says to her that the box is going to require.

Sacrifices. If she wants to walk, it’s gonna require sacrifices. She’s gonna have to kill people, she’s gonna have to kill strangers and eventually family and friends. And he’s, and before he tells her that he. She says, I miss you. And he says, I miss you too. And I miss your mother. I wish there, I wish you could help me get back to her.

Yeah. Um, and when he is telling her that she’s gonna have to kill people, he says, and when it’s my turn, don’t hesitate. Yeah. And so at this point, she kind of knows what’s 

Todd: going on. Yeah, it’s very sinister and now we’re midway through the movie and it’s day 15. At this point I, you know, we kind of knew what was going on.

I was intrigued. Like I said though, I think it was just knowing that I had 10 more to go , you know, that I just kind of went, okay, so it’s gonna be open a box, get a chocolate, probably gonna, you. Kill somebody that she doesn’t like, or open a box, get a chocolate. It’s gonna have to, you know, I, I was just feeling a certain level of impatience, , I think at this time.

Well, you’re 

Craig: right, because at this point you know what’s going on too. So, okay, come on, let’s get to it. Like , 

Todd: uh, and she gets, she gets another white one and she goes to William to take it in his presence, which was smart. Yeah. Um, and, and her right leg bounces and she kind of spasms and seizures. But you know, again, she’s not walking quite yet, so I’m getting this idea that, you know, enough of these white chocolates is gonna fix it.

Craig: Right? Right. Well, and and she, she convulses and falls to the floor and he gets down to try to help her, but she says, I can feel you. She can feel his hand on her thigh. Right. Which she couldn’t before. So he takes her home and drops her off, but realizes that she left. Keys in his car. Meanwhile, she has gone to the pool, so when he gets back to her apartment, she’s not there.

So he drops the keys like in a, a potted plant, um, and, and goes to leave. But as he’s going to leave, he realizes the door is open a, a crack. So he goes and he closes. It, turns around to leave again. When he is getting to get in his car, he sees that the door is wide open. So he goes in, he finds her detective calendar.

And realizes because she has kind of made notes about everything that’s happened with each one, and one of those was his love spell, and so he realizes that he’s under a spell. The door slams closed, the phone rings, he hears his name, and then some gibberish on the phone. Ick pops up looking scarier than usual, and then pops back down.

This was weird. Pops back down and then he gets closer to the calendar and hears a scratching and he looks closely at one of the little glass windows and he sees somebody scratching. Don’t dump it from the inside. So it’s, it’s, it’s backwards, but he can read it. So he grabs the calendar. Marvin growls at him, but he takes it to a canal and throws it in, and it sinks aggressively.

But then the water kind of starts bubbling and foaming, and the sky goes purple and ick. The demonn emerges from the water looking very much. Pinhead . Yeah. Very hell. Priest vibes going on here. Uhhuh and William tries to drive away, but it breaks the car window, pulls him into the canal and drowns him. Um, and she’s in the pool and as it’s happening, she kind of sees it and actually she comes up from under the water and finds that she’s no longer in the pool.

She’s in the canal. Yeah. It approaches. And then she just wakes up at 

Todd: home. She wakes up at home on the floor and the next chocolate is like shiny and stuff. Her dead phone rings and it’s just lots of ringing. Um, eventually she, she sees that like her mirror has kind of lit up. She has this oval shaped mirror across the room and she goes over to it and there’s like, I think maybe like a little piece where mirror starts tofl away.

Yeah. Uh, I think that’s what it is in, in the corner there. And when she looks through, She can see William. It’s like through the eyes of that creepy popup doll, you know, that, um, that he was looking at when he was looking at the calendar. I thought this was 

Craig: clever. I mean, I thought the suggestion was, , it was her in there.

Yeah. It’s kind of some like weird time loop thing. Mm-hmm. , she writes because she, she’s the one who itches Don’t dump it. Yeah. On her mirror. And that’s the etching that he sees. 

Todd: It was cool. Yeah. It was definitely a left turn, you know, for this movie, just into weird kind of like, Surreal territory with the time loop and stuff, and this guy coming out and actually physically manifesting.

And, uh, but then the next, uh, a knife pops out of the calendar with the image of a dog etched on the blade. And I thought, oh, Craig’s gonna love this . 

Craig: No, no I didn’t. I think I feel like I’m getting more desensitized to it. Oh yeah. It’s just a movie. It’s fine. Yeah. But it’s terrible. Like, cuz Sophie Sophie’s been gone for a couple weeks on holiday or something and um, she shows back up at this point and she goes in and she sees this long, huge trail of blood that leads to Eva in the sitting on the floor in the bathroom.

Holding the dog. That’s whimpering. Like if you’re gonna kill the dog, just kill it. Mm-hmm. , like, don’t draw it out. Mm-hmm. . And I also feel like, you know, Sophie isn’t particularly concerned that she found her best friend. Yeah. Huddled on the floor. Right. Pulling a dog. She’s like, she’ll be all right. You know, and, and like her boyfriend.

Thomas is there with her and they’re supposed to be going off for a weekend together and well, let’s just bring her with us. She’ll be fine. . Yeah. And they go and it’s on that trip that we find out, we, we get a flashback to the accident that led to her paralysis. Mm-hmm. . Um, and as it turns out, she had. Had a really great audition for something important.

Um, and it had gone well and Sophie had picked her up and was driving her, and she’s like, we need to commemorate this moment. And she pulls out her cell phone to take a selfie while she’s driving. Mm. Um, and that’s what caused the accident. Yeah. And so what it comes down, I mean, Sophie had, you know, stolen one of the candies.

Sophie’s got a kleptomania problem. Yeah. She had stolen one of the candies. It looked like it had a boner on it. , yeah, . And, uh, you know, so, you know, Eva’s in one room, Sophie and her boyfriend are in the other room and she’s trying to get frisky. He’s like, I can’t, I not with her in the other room. Like, I physically can’t do it.

Like, I guess, bone or shy or something, uhhuh. Um, so she gives him the magic Viagra, . Uh, and then again, here’s where the rules are, kind of ambiguous because the thing said to end your hurt, kill those who hurt you or something like that. But she doesn’t actually have to, it just takes care of it for her.

Yeah, it kills. Sophie and the boyfriend. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And it’s pretty gruesome and violent anyway. I don’t know. , then what happens? , 

Todd: uh, there’s the tapestry. There’s some tapestry. Oh, that’s how that kind of goes down. Oh, that’s 

Craig: right, that’s right. While, just before like when, while the other two are in the room.

Getting frisky. She finds a secret compartment in the box. It’s not one of the days, it’s like at the very top. And, um, she opens it up and there’s a tapestry in there and it’s a, uh, a painting, a gruesome painting, um, of a Christmas scene, and there’s a Christmas tree. And the calendar, the advent calendar is underneath the tree.

And you just see, I saw a little boy. Dead like slaughtered on the floor, but it’s also signed on the backs with an address. So she goes, and it’s this artist, she says, you know, I found this painting that you did. And he’s like, what are you talking about? And she said, yeah, it’s a painting that you just did last year.

And he is like, that can’t be because I’ve been blind for five years and he takes off his glasses and his eyes are all messed up. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. He runs his hands over the painting and he gets flashbacks of him killing his wife and son. He says, but that 

Craig: can’t be because my wife and son are alive and well. And they are.

They’re right there. Yeah. So now she figures this out. How she figures it out, I don’t know, because it seems like quite a leap to me. Mm. Like apparently you can do all of these things and you know, kill all of these people. But once you get to the end of the advent calendar, Everything will just go back to normal.

Yeah, because like, like everything will be erased. Cause 

Todd: the rule is you don’t have like, like if you interpret that second rule, quite literally, it’s like you must eat all the candies until the last one. And so she posits that. If you don’t eat the last one, 

Craig: she doesn’t figure that out. She just thinks that cuz that’s at the very, very end.

Um, she just thinks I can go ahead and do this and I can have the opportunity to walk and dance, but then it won’t be any big deal because after the last one, 

Todd: oh, everything’s gonna 

Craig: go back to normal. Everything will go back to normal. All the people, I forget all the things that I’ve killed and I’ll forget it and it’ll be fine.

But I at least have this opportunity. So at that point, knowing. Everything is, you know, time is just gonna rewind and she’s not going to have done any of these things. She won’t be able to walk, but she has the opportunity to now. So she kind of just goes hog wild. Mm-hmm. , she, uh, she kills the woman who replaced her at work.

She kills her dad’s. Terrible wife. She gives her dad another one of those candies and he’s like, oh, is it my time? And she says, yeah. Uh, and he says, did you have to sacrifice her too? Meaning the wife? And she says, no, that was just for fun.

Todd: You know what? I thought it was cute that the evil stepmother had exactly the same hairstyle as like the evil stepmother and the Disney, um, Cinderella cartoon. Yeah. . 

Craig: She was a caricature, but sure, for sure. A fun villain to, to hate. So the dad turns around because he had told her, when it’s my time, don’t hesitate.

You know, he’s, he’s anxious to rejoin his wife. So he turns around and she has a gun, and she raises it, and she lowers it, and she raises it, and she lowers it, and she raises it and she lowers it like, 10 times . Um, so like she’s hesitant, but then it just cuts to an exterior shot of the house and you hear the shot and you see the flash.

Um, and the next thing you see, I think the cute guy from the pool when she had disappeared from the pool and ended up in the canal, he had. Been curious as to where she had gone. So he had brought her chair and her stuff back to her house and he had left his number. So she’s got tons of money. So she rents a nice hotel room.

She calls him, he shows up at the door, she’s standing there at the door in a robe, and he is like, Uh, you’re not paralyzed anymore. She’s like, no, I’m fine now.

And the next thing we see is them in POIs, codal Bliss. And she’s kind of explaining to him what happens, but she’s like, once I eat the last candy, everything will go back to normal. Nobody will remember any of this. And he’s like, well, you won’t even remember me. And she’s like, no. And you won’t remember that this ever happened cuz it won’t have.

Uh huh. So she goes up to right before the stroke of midnight on the last day, she goes up to the roof and she records a message on her phone. She’s leaving a warning, just like the artist had left a warning for her. We had kind of seen some of this at the beginning, but it was outta context, so we didn’t know what was going on.

Now we know what’s going on. Um, she dances, uh, and records it, and then she, she puts her cell phone. The secret compartment and seals it up and then the, it strikes midnight, she opens up the last one. It’s like glowing and all like crystals and stuff in there, and she pulls out the candy and it’s clear and iridescent and kind of glowing.

It’s very plain. It doesn’t in seem to indicate anything as some of the others have. And she starts to go to eat it. When the cute pool guy comes running up, he’s like, wait. The rule said you have to eat every candy until you open the last door, but you’ve opened the last door. So the rules are Nolan void now.

You don’t have to eat it. And he basically says, if you don’t eat it, everything will stay the same, but you can. You can go on with your life. You have this whole new life in front of. And we can be together, whatever, . 

Todd: Right? 

Craig: And so it kind of, uh, closes up on her and she’s clearly, you know, I think it flashes to all the people that she’s killed, at least the ones that she liked, , right?

And she’s torn. And, and, uh, she just, it closes up on her and she just screams, I guess, in frustration or something. And then it cuts to. and then it opens up on a new scene. Did it give us a timestamp? 

Todd: No, I didn’t. I didn’t see one. No. 

Craig: Presumably now I wasn’t really sure what went on at the end. So I did a little bit of investigating and I found an explanation, but I don’t know if it, it does, it came from a fan.

I had not the filmmaker, so I don’t know if this is accurate or not. The fan speculated that this was a year later and a, a man is knocking on someone’s door and he’s holding his. He has her cell phone and he says A year ago this happened to you and you left this morning and the door opens. And I don’t know if we see her or not, but I think the indication is that ultimately she had eaten the last candy.

Yeah. Um, and everything had gone back to normal, including her being confined to her wheelchair again. But it also. Reset the advent calendar or whatever, and so now it’s happening to somebody else and they’re seeking out her 

Todd: help. Which makes me wonder, like, what did she then do with the Advent calendar when it was done?

How did it get in the hands of somebody else? Did it just 

Craig: kind of disappear? I don’t know. I mean, if every, if everything, if everything reset, Maybe she never, maybe it never even came into her possession in her timeline. I don’t know. To be, honestly, I liked it. I, I understand your complaint. Um, it does get a little bit repetitive in that the same thing kind of keeps happening, but it’s not always the same thing.

Yeah. There’s 

Todd: enough variety in there, right? That it, you’re not quite sure what it’s exactly gonna be. Yeah. 

Craig: But the just, you know, by nature of the advent calendar, there are, you can’t change the fact that. You know, 25 days in that season, um, you can cheat a little bit and have her miss a few days or whatever.

But if your whole premise is that you have to take something every day and that each one of those things is going to cause something to happen, well, I mean, that’s , that, that’s pretty limiting in term of plot and pacing. It’s really interesting. I still thought it was, uh, interesting and, and original to an extent.

And the performances were good and I thought that it was a well made film. Oh, yeah. I thought that the, the cinematography was good. There was some really interesting stylistic things going on. We don’t see a lot of the demonn, but when we do see him, he’s, uh, a very ominous. Frightening presence. Yeah, there was some, you know, her, she had some moral decisions and, uh, to make, which I, I thought was, uh, interesting plot-wise.

So overall I liked it. Uh, I think it was well done and I, and I would recommend it. It’s not gonna be for everybody. It is a foreign film. If there is a dubbed version, I didn’t have access to it. Uh, so you’re gonna have to read, uh, subtitles if that’s something that you’re averse to. You know, don’t watch it, but if, if you don’t mind reading subtitles, which I don’t, I think it’s worth the.

Todd: Oh yeah, for sure. I, I enjoyed it. I, I really did. Ultimately, it has a little bit of a, you know, it has that quality of like a fable or fairytale a little bit to it, uh, right. With the idea that this will kind of keep going and it’s like an age old story of the monkeys paw. So it has that pedigree. And I think it leaves just enough mystery, , you know, we never know who this demonn is, the origin of the box, anything like that.

I doubt there’ll be a sequel. It’s not the kind of movie crying out for a sequel, even though one theoretically could do it exa. That’s what I was 

Craig: gonna say. But I thought it’s not crying out for a sequel, but I felt like it was a genius idea because in. They could make one of these every year. 

Todd: Yeah. Right.

You know, . Exactly. Just it gets 

Craig: passed to a new 

Todd: person every year. Mm-hmm. . So, uh, yeah, it, it was interesting and, uh, it got me inspired. Like I kind of wanna make, like, I like to make things. I would love to make an advent calendar as awesome as this not one that kills people and grants your wishes. Just that looks like it.

Yeah. And has some cool mechanical aspects to it. Like that was really 

Craig: fun. Oh yeah. I, I mean, I don’t want a haunted advent calendar. That if I could get a facsimile of that one from the movie, I mean, it’s gorgeous. Mm-hmm. , you know, it looks like somebody painstakingly made this. If you were to actually find something like this that were actually made with quality materials, oh, it would be in far too expensive for me to afford

Yeah. But it’d be cool to have. It’s your, you cool to have to put up on your mantle at the, at Christmas time, . 

Todd: Well, thanks again for listening to another episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw. Uh, if you have any ideas for any Christmas horror movies that we could do, go ahead and send them our way. You could just look us up, two guys in a chainsaw podcast, reach out to us on Facebook on our website, two guys.red 40 net.com, and, uh, send us a message.

I would say Twitter, but, uh, you know, we, we barely check Twitter anyway, and that seems to be going down the tubes right now. . So don’t bother reaching out to us on Twitter . Find one of these other avenues, or you could have very direct access to us. If you become a patron of our podcast, go to patreon.com/chainsaw podcast.

Consider joining, uh, and supporting us so that we can continue to, uh, put out these things we really appreciate all of our patrons. And, uh, if you do join, you get, uh, access to the behind the scenes chatter that we do some extra goodies. Um, Yeah, we just go there and check it out. Until next time, I’m Todd.

And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

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