The 24 December. Rambo fan and child prodigy Thomas (10) lives with his widowed mother Julie and grandpa in a secluded mansion. Since Julie is a manager in a shopping store, she has to work overtime for all the customers who buy presents before Christmas, but a shady criminal is hired to play Santa Claus, and fired for slapping a girl. He overhears that a shipment is headed towards Julie’s house, and thus kills the driver and enters into the mansion through the chimney. The evil Santa Claus attacks Thomas and grandpa, who are hiding in the corridors and set booby-traps for the intruder. After a long cat and mouse chase, the evil Santa Claus is shot and killed, while Julie comforts Thomas.
“Home Alone” as a dark thriller—this peculiar French cult extravaganza takes the concept of Santa Clause entering a house and turns it into its complete, black opposite, the one of a 10-year old kid Thomas having to set up traps to try to defend his home from a siege of a psychotic burglar on Christmas eve. The director and writer Rene Manzor adorns the film with a great visual style, ranging from the aesthetic blue-filter cinematography up to unusual camera angles and camera drives, to create a creepy, but cozy mood, neatly located in an isolated mansion in a forest during the night, and its design is strange itself (there is a maze and even a basement with a rope bridge hanging over a bunch of toys), giving it even a surreal touch. Its biggest flaw is the vague motivation of the villain: is his goal to rob the mansion? Or to kill the kid? Or just to scare him? The problem is, it is never established what he truly covets, and thus they had to resort to the old cliche that the antagonist is just mad whenever the authors write themselves into a corner. For instance, the criminal Santa Claus sends the toy train with dynamite driving back, heading towards the knight armor in which grandpa is hiding, so Thomas runs to stop it, but the criminal tackles the kid and throws him on the floor. The villain has the kid. But what happens next is unclear and confusing: the kid just stands up and runs away, while the villain just remains lying there, looking at the toy train. This makes no sense. In another sequence, the evil Santa Claus grabs the kid by the neck from an ambush. Game over, again. But then, the villain just releases the kid (?), and tells him it is his turn to play hide and seek. These inconsistencies greatly disrupt the suspense, giving cheap escapes for the kid which diminish the danger. Several awkward editing choices also strain the narrative (Thomas ignites a fire in front of the villain, but then the sequence abruptly ends, instead of showing what happens next). Nonetheless, “Deadly Games” shows a better French attempt at imitating American-style commercial movies.
Grade:++
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