Kandisha

A demon in a bloodlust! The three teenage girls Amélie, Bintou and Morjana live in a rough Parisian suburb and like to spend their free time spraying graffiti on abandoned buildings. One day, Amélie discovers a graffiti depicting the Moroccan legend of a vengeful demoness called Kandisha. The myth says that Kandisha appears when a woman speaks her name five times into a mirror to take revenge on a man. When Amélie is brutally attacked by her ex-boyfriend, she utters the curse... The next day, the man is dead. But Kandisha is not satisfied with one victim: she starts killing men from the girls' circle at random. The friends must now join forces to break the curse and save Amélie's little brother Antoine, who is next on Kandisha's list. Atmospherically dense and anything but bloodless, this horror film combines classic revenge myths with urban realism. Directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury manage to transfer a folkloric legend into a modern setting without losing the force of the terror. The film's strengths lie in its visual design, whereby the violence emanating from the demoness is consistently staged. Kandisha as a character is terrifying and highly symbolic - a feminist figure of revenge who responds to patriarchal violence with supernatural power. She is flanked by credible young protagonists who bring a certain emotional depth to the story. Even if the film remains rather conventional within the familiar genre patterns, “Kandisha” convinces as a solid genre work with a dark, uncompromising tone.