Kandisha

 Kandisha follows a group of friends over summer break in the French Baineaus - the sort of place that films like Bac Nord would consider enemy territory. Three teenaged friends in particular: Amélie (Mathilde Lamusse, white), Morjana (Samarcande Saadi, Arab) and Bintou (Suzy Bemba, black). If you're wondering why I'm listing their ethnicities... well, it's because the girls themselves bring it up every time they can, teasing each other good-naturedly; Whether it might be tied to what's coming once the plot kicks in... well.. yeah, it does factor in. Bintou also gets ribbed as belonging to the bourgeoisie because she moved out of the ghetto, which might be the Frenchest thing I've seen in a while.

 These young women and their extended social group are brash, dumb and a little obnoxious - which, yeah, it tracks: they're teenagers. But the girls in particular have a lot of chemistry and are pretty funny, and the script does a great job of establishing how much they care about each other and their families. Which kind of sucks because they all reside in a horror movie.

 After a night out Amélie is attacked by her ex-boyfriend - it's pretty horrific, but at least she manages to defend herself successfully. Still in shock, she remembers a Moroccan tale Morjana told her about an avenging demon that can be summoned to punish menfolk; all it takes is drawing a pentagram in blood and calling her name - Aisha Kandisha.

 Which she, of course, does. And it works! Kandisha appears as a beautiful woman almost completely covered by a burqa and chases the creep in the way of oncoming traffic.

 But what sort of horror movie would this be if the summoning didn't have terrible consequences? That'd be like... I don't know, remaking Candyman so that the titular demon ends up being a force of social justice. So Kandisha, once summoned, can't go back to hell or wherever she came from until she's killed six men. And - no cheating, no killing people who might deserve it; She immediately goes after people Amélie and her friends love.

 The meat of the movie consists of the girls trying to find a way to get rid of the summoned demon to protect the others... all while said demon goes around butchering said others. It's a pretty good monster! It really is based on an old bit of North-African folklore, and evolves throughout the movie from an almost human-seeming succubus, a giant demon thing, and something in between the two. The depictions I've seen of her all tend towards the normal-sized succubus, but I'm not going to complain about getting a cool creature too. All of her forms have hoofs, which figure prominently in the film's most memorable death.

 Script-wise it's a mixed bag. The plot is derivative, extremely predictable, and unless my maths have failed me, it suffers from a pretty glaring plot hole... but some excellent character work gives it a kick most slashers lack; The movie builds up some good tension just by following around people on their day-to-day lives, making you wonder if they're going to get creatively brutalized by a goat woman (spoilers: they are). The acting is mostly pretty good, with some rough patches, and everyone is pretty likeable. Except the ex-boyfriend, fuck that guy. (But even he gets a small scene showing he realized he screwed up before he gets flattened off-screen).

 There's no real message to the film, but it does play with France's colonialist past - Kandisha is said to be the ghost of a Moroccan woman killed by the Portuguese, and it's 'the white one' that summons her in the first place, wreaking havoc on all the other immigrant's lives.

 The cinematography (by Simon Roca), like the script, takes a few pointers from Bernard Rose's Candyman - which, to be honest, I consider a good thing, at least when it's done well as it is here; Lots of long establishing shots, derelict environments, and a great atmosphere. Effects and gore, meanwhile, are a mixed bag: There's a death by CGI fire that's... pretty unfortunate in a way that made me laugh out loud (when will people learn?), but the rest of the kills are at the very least nasty fun, even when they lean silly. There's a couple of gruesome standouts - the movie was written and directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, after all, and they haven't lost any of their gorehound edge since Inside.

Seriously: When will people fucking learn?

 That gnarly gore aspect doesn't really prevent the movie from feeling like it's aimed at teens, and I suspect it might be pretty good in that respect: a short (eighty-five minutes) runtime, a cast of likeable, photogenic knuckleheads, a straightforward story with ample shock factor... hell, even the film's lack of originality. Yeah, it'd probably go down great at a slumber party.