Sheitan

Due to my fanboy-ism of multi-cultural actor Vincent Cassel, there was no way I would miss out on our film driven by his acting. In this outing of film, Cassel plays a lunatic satanic Shepard who attracts a bunch of club hopping French youth whose main pastimes include French underground rap and unorthodox drugs with fine women.


While many of us can relate to these flesh-like temptations, I don’t think anyone would agree that they would deserve a fate such as the one in store for them. This film succeeds where most films similarly fail. Sheitan is the shining light, the bringer of justice, for films that have a problem of being over-edited.

The film incorporates flashy visuals and brightly contrasted colors, as not seen by most French films. When you view most of their outgoing cinema, it seems they produce a film in black & white and slap the art label on it. Sheitan is a work of the similar “You have sex, you die. You do drugs, you die” but with a religious spin that involves a creepy fucking doll.


The film is entirely star driven. Cassel found this lost script so intriguing, that he funded most of the film out of his bottomless pockets. If there is one thing I loved, it was Cassel’s racism in the film. I have never seen any one mustachioed man call a Negro out using crude vulgarities and still maintain his sly grin as if nothing of temperament was handled. Despite the black racism, there is also hate for other colors.

The film is top-notch, sans a couple of scenes that it could have been without. Sheitan delivers on a top-notch entertainment level. Vincent Cassel not only shines, but he illuminates the entire film. If I had to use only one word to describe Cassel in this film, it would be sinister. You will cheer him back on screen, only to be horrified by him, and demand that he leave. Sheitan is fierce, fast, and unmerciful. Satan would be proud.

-Maq