MALEFIQUE

D. Eric Valette :: France 2002 :: 90min :: 35mm (Fr. with Eng. Subtitles)
Gérald Laroche, Philippe Laudenbach, Clovis Cornillac, Dimitri Rataud

WINNER - Prix Vision, Avignon Film Festival 2003

In Eric Valette's taut tale of cramped terror, blood-soaked suspense, claustrophobic anguish and full-blown fright, four prisoners find a diary of black magic spells offering them freedom.

Carrere (Gerald Laroche) has been accused of company fraud and is waiting for his two-timing wife to post nonexistent bail. His cellmates are pre-op muscle transsexual Marcus (Clovis Cornillac), retarded insect-eating Daisy (Dimitri Rataud) and intellectual wife-murderer Lasalle (Phillippe Laudenbrach). When a stone slab loosens next to Carrere's bunk, they unearth a book of weird symbols written by a 1920's convict who used the esoteric incantations to walk through the cell walls. But their great escape leads to further confinement in a hellish limbo where their vanity is tested by an evil presence granting each a solitary wish.

With outrageous special effects - wait until you see the porno collage of winking vaginas - MALEFIQUE is a grimy, sticky wonder where time-suspended luridness, nightmare mythmaking and a surreal hallucinatory quality combine to provide vivid gross-out tableaux and genuinely gruesome pleasures.
-Alan Jones, Frightfest