Product Details

• Actors: Vincent Cassel, Olivier Barthelemy, Roxane Mesquida, Nico Le Phat Tan, Leïla Bekhti
• Directors: Kim Chapiron
• Writers: Kim Chapiron, Christian Chapiron
• Producers: Vincent Cassel, Kim Chapiron, Éric Névé
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (DTS 5.1)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Tartan Video
• DVD Release Date: December 26, 2006
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000IMVE32
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,780 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Sheitan" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

On christmas eve 3 young guys meet 2 gorgeous girls who invite them to spend the weekend in the country. They arrive & meet the maniacal housekeeper joseph. As the weekend progresses josephs behavior only gets more erratic & the friends realize their host has made a demonic pact. All hell is about to break loose. Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 12/26/2006 Run time: 94 minutes

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BOOM!, July 18, 2008

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sheitan (DVD)

Sheitan (Kim Chapiron, 2006)

Once again, we in America have managed to entirely miss a great French horror film. I ask once again why on earth we got a theatrical release of Haute Tension when this-- with a stronger cast (including Vincent Cassel, who seems to play very well on this side of the pond), a better story (with fewer plot holes), a cracking script, and a sense of outright weird that it shares with the similarly wonderful Calvaire, went straight to DVD in the States. It's a question I may never be able to answer. But I'm glad we at least got a DVD release; most Americans are still waiting to get their hands on, say, Jaime Balaguero's [REC] as I write this. In any case, Sheitan (and Calvaire, the film I will spend most of this review comparing with it) has a weirdness about it I'm not sure I've seen since Deliverance. And I highly recommend it for anyone who found Deliverance in any way enjoyable, and for much the same reasons.

The plot: three friends, Bart (Olivier Bartelemy), Thai (Nico le Phat Tan), and Ladj (Ladj Ly), are clubbing in Paris when they meet some lovely young women. Soon after, Bart gets into a fistfight and is unceremoniously thrown out. Eve (Roxane Mesquida), still looking to party, suggests they all head out to her parents' house in the country. (The parents are, of course, away.) On the way, they run into Eve's parents' caretaker, Joseph (Vincent Cassel), who seems to be not all there, but harmless. As the weekend progresses, the three friends, but especially Bart, realizes that all is not what it seems; while the other two have each glommed onto one of the girls, Bart finds himself the object of Joseph's affection. He feels less distressed about this, however, upon meeting Joseph's jaw-droppingly beautiful daughter Jeanne (Julie-Marie Parmentier), but he still mostly has eves for Eve, who leads him on while at the same time flirting with Thai.

Has the plot of a weird romantic comedy, doesn't it? Trust me, it's a horror film in the same way Audition is a horror film; it really is a weird romantic comedy, but everything eventually explodes. And while the final fifteen minutes of Sheitan doesn't have the same stomach-churning power as do the final fifteen of Miike's magnum opus, believe me, things take as many turns for the worse as they possibly can. This is Chapeion's first feature film, but his debut short also used Cassel and Bartelemy, and he knows how to use them to best effect; he certainly does here.

The more Vincent Cassel films I see, the more impressed I am with his acting. He breaks away from his usual tough-guy role here to play a happy-go-lucky, somewhat mentally vacant rube, and he does it wonderfully. In many ways, it brought to mind Leonardo DiCaprio's performance in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?. Cassel's resume is somewhat less wide-ranging than DiCaprio's was at the time, and so it seems even more a departure; he pulls it off with aplomb. Bartelemy doesn't have nearly as much work to do playing the clueless party animal, but he really makes his character's confusion and fumbled attempts to think quickly work. The rest of the cast are almost as good. The script is sharp and witty, never revealing too much of itself for the sake of a cheap thrill. I could go on pointing out things about this movie that make it worth watching, but by the time I was done, you'd have spent longer reading the review than you will watching the ninety-four-minute movie. As long as your idea of horror doesn't end with Hostel (or I Walked with a Zombie), Sheitan is a winner through and through. ****

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Nerve Twitching Nightmare !, February 19, 2007

By 

creatureart (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sheitan (DVD)

[Do buy this film!
Its beautiful that vincent cassel agreed to make this film. It was creepy as hell!

its not at all like they just dubbed the texas chainsaw massacre.

absolutely worth your money & your time.]

Kim Chapiron's "SHEITAN" produced by and starring Vincent Cassel is by far one of the freakiest creep-fest's that I have seen in a while. Vincent Cassel is mind-blowingly scary as Joseph the abnormally strong bazerko housekeeper. Throughout the first half of the film your stricken with that unsettling(not quite right)feeling that something horrible is just around the corner. When you get to the halfway mark of the film horrible slowly starts to reveal itself in small but disturbing little doses. When you hit 3/4 the way through,any sense of normality you have left is swiftly pulled out from under your feet and you are then thrusted into a deliriously nightmarish rollercoaster of a climax that stands to be IMO one of the most skin-crawlingly frightning endings in horror film history. This is another unique & truly creative french kiss to the American backwoods horror film and also more proof that the real horror movies are being made by foreign independent film makers.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Another letdown, June 7, 2008

By 

Denisruc (Seattle, Wa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sheitan (DVD)

While it's nice to see a new generation of French film makers embrace the horror genre, none of their recent attempts have been truly convincing. I had high hopes for "Sheitan". Regrettably, those hopes were dashed.

The main problem of films like "Sheitan" or "High Tension (Unrated Widescreen Edition)" is their fundamental lack of originality. They rehash themes that have already been developed exhaustively by American film makers. Sure, the French seem quite apt at pushing the limits of gore and violence (could it be because they don't have the MPAA breathing down their necks?) but ultimately I have to sum up "Sheitan" with the same words I used when I reviewed "Haute Tension": you've seen it all before but this time it's in French.
Furthermore, I have to wonder about the recurring portrayal of country people as degenerates. In that regard "Sheitan" is just like "Calvaire: The Ordeal". I first thought this was just a case of too much "Deliverance" but eventually I came to the conclusion that this might in fact be the most authentic aspect of the movie, something that is uniquely French and for once not borrowed from America. If you want to know what the Parisian elite truly thinks of the average provincial Frenchman, if you want to know in what low esteem French artists hold their fellow countrymen, then watch "Sheitan".