Director
Kim Chapiron
Cast
Vincent Cassel Joseph
Olivier Bartélémy Bart
Roxane Mesquida Eve
Leila Bekhti Yasmine
Nicolas Le Phat Tan Thai
Ladj Ly Ladj
DVD Release Date: December 26, 2006
Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 94 Minutes
The Movie
Christmas Eve and people are in the clubs partying it up like they don’t have a care in the world. Three friends in Bart, Ladj, and Thai are in a club and just drinking and enjoying the night. An attractive bartender, Yasmine, joins them as her shift ends while one of the guys catches the eye of a hot young woman, Eve. Bart gets thrown out of the club for starting a fight and they have nowhere to go but don’t want the night to end so Eve invites them all back to her home in the country.
Upon finally arriving at the huge house in the middle of nowhere, the boys meet the creepy housekeeper Joseph and a lot of the town locals. Joseph seems like the friendliest of people who just can’t help snapping when something touches a nerve. The group merely wants to enjoy their time together, but things just get a lot stranger as time goes on. And that is definitely not a good thing.
All I can say to start out is just wow, and I don’t necessarily mean that in the best of ways either. The entire first hour of the film is committed to setting up what is going to happen in the last thirty minutes, and it does a damn good job of it. Problem is that as ingenious as it may seem, it really does get extremely boring waiting for something to happen. The time just appears to drag hoping that a big scare or something worthwhile will finally occur to anyone involved.
It’s weird to say that I was waiting for something to happen considering that this film had a little bit of everything. There is drug use, nudity, incest, dudity (male nudity), drinking, robbery, a little bestiality, sex, psychos, blood, guts, dolls, goats, and so much more stuffed into ninety minutes that the film really could have used another hour or so just to fully entail everything going on but I was still bored.
Boredom wasn’t the only problem either, but more so confusion. Don’t get me wrong for everything in the film is perfectly understandable in a morbid sense, but the confusion comes as to wondering why it’s happening in the first place. Joseph obviously has some severe mental problems going on upstairs proportions so huge that they are not funny anymore but scary. If the boys had one more of their little private conversations determining if they should leave or not and then still deciding to stay, then stupidity such as that deserves whatever they have coming to them.
The Video
Sheitan is seen in Anamorphic Widescreen and looks fine, but just has this feel about it as if it’s a much older film. The dullness factor of the look of the film itself just gives it a bit of an eighties feel, but nothing really to complain about.
The Audio
The film is heard in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and comes through perfectly. My only complaint is I always enjoy seeing how the dialogue and interaction between people of the film sounds to make sure they can be heard loudly and understandably. My trouble lies in the fact that I couldn’t pay much attention to that while having to read subtitles, but I can’t fault the movie on my not knowing another language.
Special Features
The Making Of Sheitan – Perhaps one of the most interesting “making of” featurettes I have ever seen on any DVD. Vincent Cassel sits down and simply takes you through every aspect of the film starting with an introduction to Kourtrajmé Productions which is made up of some of the craziest people you’d ever want to work with. Cassel then leads you through casting, direction training, stunt training, rehearsals, and everything involved with the making of the film. It is incredibly in-depth and I can only hope to come across more DVD’s with this much put into the special features.
Trailer
Tartan Trailers – H6, Red Shoes, The Maid, and Marebito
The Inside Pulse
I really wanted to give Sheitan a higher score especially after watching the “making of” featurette, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do so. The film just seemed like something that I would enjoy and want to like so badly, but it’s already at the point that watching it again anytime soon just doesn’t seem probable at all. The DVD’s saving grace is the extras and the creepiness that Vincent Cassel brings to the table, so a rental may be worth the price.
