If you triggered a death challenge tournament
after opening a demonic advent calendar, what would you do? Yeah you heard me right. This cursed Christmas gift is home to the
Anti-Santa-Clause, a creature that’s both bad and good depending on who’s accidentally
started eating his chocolate. For a girl with disabilities, he’s offering
the prize of fully functioning legs…if she’s willing to sacrifice a few naughty and nice
people first. I’m going to break down the mistakes made,
what you should do, and how to beat MR. DROOLY in THE ADVENT CALENDAR. Eva is paraplegic. By day, she cosplays as Bob Parr while getting
chewed out by her boss who keeps her around for government disability money. By night, she’s haunted by memories of the
semi-truck collision that stole her mobility. Oh, and to really drive home that her life
sucks, her dad can’t remember her due to Alzheimer’s and he’s kept away thanks
to an evil stepmom with Disney-villain hair. On her birthday, Eva’s friend Sophie visits
from Germany with cake, booze, and a giant German advent calendar. I mean, without knowing it’s evil, that
thing looks friggen sweet. And it’ll fit right in with all this French
gray gloom. The 24th and last compartment of the box is
labeled “Christmas Miracle” while the back of the box is etched with a warning – “throw
this calendar away, and I’ll kill you.” Eva cracks open compartment one, awakening
some terrible masked creature. The candy wrapper inside contains the calendar’s
three rules written in German. Sophie translates. First, if you eat one candy, you have to eat
them all. Second, respect the rules until you open the
last door. Third, don’t throw the box away. Do any of these and “I” will kill you. Eva pops the candy in her mouth…and the
creature begins to drool. Since it’s already the third of December,
she cracks open the second container immediately. Inside she’s sad to find an After Eight
chocolate, which she says is her dad’s favorite. Sophie tries to cheer her up saying she didn’t
pack the thing, but Eva puts it aside anyway. When she cracks open box 3, the creature’s
skin begins to writhe. This one doesn’t contain chocolate, but
a small card decorated with some religious figure banishing a winged demon. Again, Eva can’t read the German, so Sophie
translates, “To cure hurt, destroy what hurt you.” Oh, so it’s THAT sort of death game…where
the wordage is vague, arbitrary, and should be more easily beatable. At least, once we know the amount of time
we have to complete each challenge. Eva tries to open the fourth compartment,
but it’s jammed until the clock strikes twelve and a German voice erupts from the
calendar saying “It’s midnight. Open the door.” A spring-loaded ghoulish priest appears, with
the German word for I – Ich – etched on the back. Eva removes a marshmallow Jesus from compartment
four, and Sophie reads the wrapper “Jesus said to the cripple, ‘Arise and walk.’” Eva ends the evening cold. She’s about to put the calendar aside when
she eats the After Eight and the phone suddenly rings – it’s her father. He wishes her Happy Birthday before the line
goes dead. The next day, her boss tells her she’ll
basically be training her replacement, a sexy idiot who can’t stop wiggling her toes while
telling Eva how sorry she is about her…situation. When Sophie picks her up for dinner, Eva reveals
that the call from her dad happened on a disconnected landline. Sophie jokes that she might have grabbed a
trippy advent calendar by mistake, revealing that she knows nothing about it because she
stole it from its previous owner. Sophie drags Eva out for a truly awkward dinner,
then abandons her to get taken home by a French Gordon Gecko, who offers to venmo her $457
to use on a new trading app before he attacks her and tosses her out in the street when
she fights back. She screams for him to drop dead, which triggers
box 5 to open on its own at home. A little model of his car rolls out and her
dog tears into it. The creep is torn to shreds in his crushed
car. The next day, Eva’s doing some creepin’
of her own on a guy named WILLIAM when she hears about the accident from Sophie, who’s
returning to Germany for two weeks. They discover that the attacker somehow sent
Eva a text after his death, one that connects her to the trading app and the $457 dollars,
but neither thinks much of it. Compartment 6 contains a candy heart, which
she puts into William’s mulled wine when she suddenly sees him again. Lemme tell you…this love potion crap works
immediately. Dude spends the entire day with her and drives
her home. This time, she’s raring to open compartment
7. It contains a candy clock. As soon as she eats it, she loses 4 days of
time. She has dozens of missed messages and several
additional boxes are open on the advent calendar, wrappers are everywhere. It’s now day ten…and she loses her job
for the spontaneous vacation. William tells her to stop eating the candy
if she thinks it’s laced with something. Yeah, easy for you to say Will. You don’t have a marshmallow that’ll magically
heal your legs. For those of you asking why she hasn’t taken
it yet, I know why. Imagine the thing you want most in the entire
world is behind a door. You can open it, but the second you do, you
either get everything you ever wanted or all your dreams smashed to smithereens forever. You’re gonna hesitate. She notices the candy wrappers from the 4-day
fog form the symbol of a company on the trading app and she invests the $457 on it. She tells the box to let her sleep tonight,
so the calendar opens box 11 on its own. It summons her dog, feeds it a treat, then
opens the door for it. In the morning, Eva discovers the trading
app is making her tons of money…and she finds her dog outside covered in blood. A small medallion that belonged to her boss
is tangled in his fur. So, you’re gonna wanna draw your dog a bath
with a bit of baking soda diluted in the water. Bathe him three or four more times just to
be sure. Just don’t let them drink the water, as
baking soda can cause issues at higher concentrations. Then, just to be safe, take that dog to the
park, find a giant mud puddle and let him go to town. Then come back and bathe him again. Hydrogen peroxide can remove blood more thoroughly
but it can harm your dog’s skin and he just did us a solid, so we’re sticking to baking
soda baths. Eva starts taking the calendar more seriously. In box 12, she finds another Jesus marshmallow
and assumes it must be the same as the first that promised to fix her legs. She pops it right in her mouth this time and
her legs begin to shake. So, she eats the one she’s been saving too. Yeah, no. We’re pulling out our google translate and
reading the German messages first. So far, this calendar’s been pretty sweet,
but I’m assuming the rest are sour until I know different or Christmas arrives. Eva wakes in the hospital. Will tells her she was found in the street
clutching the calendar. Memories come back to her – she walked outside
before collapsing. In the night, a crazed religious nutter patient
looking like even Satan doesn’t want this one brings her the advent calendar. She opens box 13, revealing a golden skull
and chocolate communion wafer. The possessed chick says “Deliver me from
Evil” and Eva feeds the chocolate to her. Um…how about you break off a corner of that
thing for yourself, Eva. Rule number one - YOU have to eat all the
candy, remember? On day 14, she opens the compartment to find
another After Eight. She’s about to take a bite when she heads
to her dad’s house and feeds it to him instead. The fog in his mind clears and he warns her
that the calendar will demand additional sacrifices, but if she makes it to the end, she’ll be
able to walk again permanently. He tells her not to feel bad about sacrificing
him when the time comes. Then, he’s gone again. On day 15, she gets another sweet baby Jesus. She goes straight to the hospital and asks
William to spot her while she takes it. Just like before, her body shakes and for
a little while she can feel her legs again. I know the downsides to this drooling demon
box are coming but I kinda want my own. William drives Eva to a pool. When he sees she’s left her keys in the
car, he goes to leave them in on her front porch, but her door is open. He ventures inside and finds Eva’s quick
markup of boxes and consequences, before the phone rings and a message materializes on
the calendar. It tells him “DON’T trash it.” Which immediately inspires him to dump the
calendar in the nearest river. It sinks instantly, the sky Prince-ifies,
and the monster rises. Bro, you done effed up. He tries to drive away, but Mr. Drooly ain’t
havin’ that. Eva sees Will’s drowned body at the bottom
of her pool and tries to give him half-assed mouth to mouth, which I shouldn’t need to
tell you doesn’t work underwater – before she swims to the surface and appears in the
river. Honestly, Eva. You’re better off. Dude can’t follow simple instructions. The monster teleports her back home with the
calendar. Outside, a guy from the pool ANTOINE has brought
her chair back from where she left it. She tells him to go away. You remember those wacky cash prize games
they used to have where you’d get a million dollars if you could stay in bed for a month? Well, we’ve got like seven days standing
between us and a pair of functional legs. I say let’s do one last snack run to the
nearest supermarket and hibernate at home for the duration. Day 17 brings her a weird glowing gummy in
the shape of a W. The hallucinogenic kicks in faster than a
Turkish delight at Coachella. In the bathroom, the mirror begins to glow
and through a tiny hole she watches William pick up her phone the day before. We see SHE was the one who scratched out the
message “don’t dump it.” Sound off in the comments if you think he
would’ve still thrown it away if she hadn’t written anything this time around. On Day 18, she resists opening the next compartment
for hours…for…no reason honestly. Not sure how watching a dude ignore you is
worse than seeing him die, and you’re in too far now to stop it. Something pops out of the calendar. It’s an already bloody knife carved with
a small dog symbol. Lame, bro. Can’t I renegotiate for my stepmom or something? Sophie arrives the next morning to find a
massive slick of blood on the floor… Well if Mr. Drooly doesn’t kill you, John
Wick will. We’ll tragically never know if this was
punishment for not opening 18 or if the compartment had this sacrifice in mind anyway. The real problem with all of this is the inconsistency. She can leave a chocolate uneaten for days
without consequence, but she has to kill her dog immediately? We need two things here to beat this game
– we need to actually translate and read each wrapper or clue so we know what to do
AND we need to test it for technicalities. For example, does it have to be her dog at
all? I don’t want to kill ANY dog, but could
we go to a kill shelter and find an ancient dog to put out of its misery? The calendar lures Sophie to open Compartment
19 where she finds a blue diamond candy marked by the old meat and two veg. This she pockets for herself. Eva demands she hand over whatever was in
19. Sophie hands her a stick of gum, which Eva
chews until it loses flavor. She worries that nothing is happening. Driving out of the city, Eva loses time again. The next thing we see is the memory of how
she became paraplegic. We learn Sophie was driving that night,
We snap out of it in a cabin where Eva has just eaten the 20th candy, which forced her
to relive that memory. Eva begins chanting that she doesn’t blame
Sophie and doesn’t want to hurt her. When the clock strikes midnight for day 21,
the priest is missing when the calendar pops. There’s another sweet baby Jesus in this
one. Eva says if she eats this Sophie will die…which
is a big leap. Sophie speaks German, she’s the reason we
understood the initial wrappers in the first place, but Eva’s no longer asking her to
translate the wrappers and Sophie has zero curiosity…which is odd considering she just
found her best friend bathing in her dog’s blood. Eva gives Sophie the marshmallow to hold until
tomorrow when Eva can take it while she’s home alone. Eva continues to chant that she doesn’t
want to hurt Sophie as Sophie heads to bed and gives her boyfriend the little blue candy,
mistaking it for a Viagra. Eva notices a string hanging out of the calendar
and opens a secret compartment, which contains a folded painting by a German artist…just
as Sophie begins to scream. Pedantic time – do the rules matter at all? Theoretically, the candy that turned boyfriend
here into a killer was meant for Eva, so what would’ve happened if she ate it? Was she gonna drag herself around like a half-eaten
zombie chasing Sophie, then rip her apart? What if Eva couldn’t catch her? As we’ve seen, this calendar has predictive
capabilities. It predicted that Eva would give the candy
in the hospital to the possessed lady. It predicted Eva would still choose to scratch
out a warning to William on the mirror. No doubt it knew Sophie would steal the candy…but…what
if she hadn’t? And have we already lost the game because
we never ate some of the candies? That’s all to say…what WAS a pretty tightly
wound plot until this point…begins to unravel like a cartoon sweater. Mr. Drooly snaps the boyfriend’s neck and
crushes Sophie’s skull before forcing Eva to eat a Jesus marshmallow. Eva’s legs kick in and she leaves with the
calendar and painting. She navigates to the painting’s owner in
Berlin. Dude’s been blind for five years, but runs
his hands over the painting anyway. He envisions himself killing his wife and
son. There’s just one problem – they’re both
still alive. Eva interprets that this must mean that he
opened the full calendar, sacrificed them for his sight, then created the painting as
a warning for the next owner and…then something else. This last piece is left unsaid for now. In the car, day 22 begins. Eva finds a naked doll with hair like the
woman who stole her job inside. When she puts the doll down, Mr. Drooly appears,
ready to choke a bish, until she uses it like a voodoo doll to torture and kill the sexy
idiot. Would popping her head off have done the same
thing or did we have to go full Shyamalan with this woman? Also…did we have to kill her at all? Compartment 23 contains another After Eight,
as well as a Remington Model 95 pocket pistol, implying it’s dear old dad’s turn to be
sacrificed. Or, you know, we could just shoot him in the
leg and see if that counts. Seriously, WHERE does it say any of them have
to die? Eva delivers the calendar in a wrapped box
to her father’s house, where her wicked stepmom immediately puts it in the fire. I mean, that’s kinda clever, using the calendar
as a sort of death note so Mr. Drooly will get rid of people for us. She feeds her dad the After Eight and has
a few moments with him before he accepts his fate and she fires when his back is turned. Yeah, that tiny gun carries a 130-grain bullet
that can move with a velocity of between 425 and 685 feet per second. Not a bee sting, but not powerful either. You’re gonna wanna put that thing right
up to the base of his ear to ensure the most humane kill shot. Then, you’re gonna wanna clean that gun,
put it in wicked stepmom’s hand, and shove that into the fire. Something happens here that breaks the story
completely. Eva sleeps with Antoine, telling him the whole
story, bringing us back to what she said at the painter’s house. She believes that once she eats the 24th candy,
she’ll wake up back in her wheelchair on December 1st and everyone will be alive again,
because that’s what happened to the painter – he sacrificed his wife and son, then it
reset, and that’s why they’re still alive. Following her “logic,” this either means
that he DID or DID NOT eat the final candy…and it reset everything. She says eating the final candy resets it…but
she has no way of knowing this. Why would following the rules and playing
the game to its conclusion cost you the prize? Where do the rules say that? Also, you know for a fact that this calendar
messes with time. For all you know, this hidden painting hasn’t
been painted yet. She climbs to the roof, records her own warning
message for the next owner on her phone and opens compartment 24. There’s a clear candy inside. She’s about to eat it when Antoine reminds
her that rule 2 says she only has to follow the rules until she opens the final door,
then the choice is hers – DON’T eat the candy and everyone will remain dead but she’ll
be able to walk. EAT the candy and her life will reset. Again – nothing to this point has suggested
this… To prove his point, Antoine chucks the calendar
off the roof. When nothing happens, he rejoices that this
proves the rules can now be broken. …and we’re left with no answer as to which
choice she made. We cut away to a year later when the next
unlucky schmuck shows up to her seemingly abandoned apartment looking for help. Yeah these fuzzy rules don’t make for a
satisfying finish, which is a shame because the concept’s pretty cool. For us, it all comes down to technicalities. We’re translating EVERY wrapper message. We’re stabbing and shooting legs first to
see if that’s enough, because not a single thing says anyone has to die. And I would happily shoot twenty-four people
in the leg if it meant I could use mine again. They’ll get over it. Ultimately, if the demon didn’t want to
lose to technicalities, he should have worded his game better. Here at the end, we just need to ride out
the day before making our last decision. Wait and see if Mr. Drooly comes to collect
Antoine’s head. Dude might be busy right now. For those reasons, I think THE ADVENT CALENDAR
was Beaten. Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.
