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Four men held in the same prison cell discover a book that is no mere hardcover, but a tome that can grant them freedom…if they can figure out how to use it (or if they really want to be free).

Malefique, the 2003 French horror/thriller, is quite the rollercoaster ride of uncomfortable moments, violence, and male relationships.  The story opens in the 1920’s, where a prisoner is using a book to perform a blood ritual – using his cellmates as fodder – with bizarre but undefined results.  In the modern day, a man named Carrére (played by Gérald Laroche) who committed a white-collar crime is sent to prison and celled-up with three other men: the Hannibal-Lecter-like Lasalle, the in-between-op transsexual Marcus, and Marcus’s boy toy, the mildly retarded Pâquerette.  The latter’s name seems to be a play on “pack rat” – funny considering he eats everything he can get into his mouth, storing things away.

After a few awkward meals, Carrére finds the same book the past-prisoner used in his blood ritual.  Through trial and error, the four men discover they can use the bizarre text to perform feats of magic.  The men argue with each other over the book and decide on trying to use it in order to affect their escape.  Gore and twisted desires unravel their plans as the men struggle to maintain a civil, ordered truce.  They all end up becoming one with their base wants in the perverted wish-fullfillment the magic book provides them.  The ending is a little too Outer Limits in contrast with the rest of the films tone.

Almost all of the scenes take place in the four-man prison cell the men are trapped in.  The cell itself is a cross between Oz’s M City and Midnight Express’s Turkish hellhole.  While this probably afforded the filmmakers a lower budget for sets, it also helps draw the audience in, so that we experience the tension such a forced enclosure creates.  The camera work allows the room to be suffocating (during intense, close-ups) and a metaphor for the expanse that exists between the four men who inhabit it (in well-framed long shots).

The book becomes a fifth prisoner trapped with them, albeit a silent but powerful one.  Its nature of being both alluring and repulsive (sometimes separately, other times all at once) is very reminiscent of the puzzle box in Hellraiser; but the role it plays in these men’s lives is closer to the box in Hellraiser’s model, the novella The Hellbound Heart.  Sometimes the book’s siren song reminds one of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart.

The extras on the disc are bare-boned.  The abilities to choose chapters, set the language (French or English), or activate the subtitles (English only) stand with a weak posture next to the extras’ “highlight”: the trailers.  Playing automatically, we get a preview for Brocéliande, a human-sacrificey, druidy thriller which is followed immediately by a trailer for Malefique itself.  I would have loved a behind-the-scenes on the special effects, interviews with actors, or at least a commentary track by director Eric Valette.  It was not to be unfortunately.  C’est la vie.

This film is definitely worth a rental before you buy.  Malefique is a nice addition to the horror-thriller genre.

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