I have an ongoing list of movies that show that most women are stuck dealing with either an explicitly evil man or a subtly evil man throughout their lives. The first type of men are blatant red flags, and you can notice that they reek of trouble from a million miles away. The second type of men are red flags as well, but you only get a whiff of the underlying issues once you have spent a significant amount of time with them. Currently, this list features Cold Meat, where a victim of abuse is saved by a serial killer. In Out Come the Wolves, there’s a volatile fiancé and a murderous best friend, and the protagonist has to decide who she should save to live peacefully. Challengers is also a great example, because all three of them are horrible people and deserve each other. But my most controversial choice is the hugely popular Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge because Simran chooses a stalker and creep like Raj over the arrogant and annoying Kuljeet. And now this problematic group has expanded with the entry of The Calendar Killer.
Adolfo J. Kolmerer’s The Calendar Killer, written by Sebastian Fitzek and Susanne Schneider, tells the story of Jules, who works in the helpline department of an agency called Walk Me Home. His job mainly involves receiving calls from women who are traveling alone at night and staying on the line with them until they get home or to a place that’s relatively safe. Usually, these cases are resolved within a few minutes, and Jules can do it all from the comfort of his home while looking after his sick daughter, Fabienne. That said, on December 6, Jules’ life was turned upside down when he got a call from a woman named Klara. She said that she was the next target of the titular serial killer, and if she doesn’t end her life or that of her husband, Martin, then the Calendar Killer is going to come for her. After talking to Klara for a few minutes, Jules realizes that she has a daughter called Amelie; she is a victim of domestic abuse, and for some messed-up reason, she wants to end her own life so that Amelie can grow up with Martin. Hence, Jules finds himself at the weirdest crossroads as he struggles to figure out how to save Klara from her abuser, her assassin, and herself.
Without revealing the actual identity of the killer, I will say this: The Calendar Killer has the oddest yet most realistic depiction of a vigilante. Every other movie where a man avenges a woman for something heinous she’s had to suffer through glorifies him to no end because the filmmaker wants to send the message that most men are good, and society needs them to weed out the bad apples. But in this film, instead of killing bad men, the man in question kills women for accepting the abuse that they have been facing. I know, that sounds really weird and borderline problematic. However, if you go online or switch on the TV and listen to how men interact with women who are talking about the horrors they’ve faced at the hands of men, you’ll notice an absurd amount of victim blaming. And things predictably escalate to the point where the abused individual is berated for not alerting the authorities in time, as if that has ever been the solution. So, if you examine the plot of the film through this lens and actually listen to why this guy is doing what he is doing, he feels like a very accurate encapsulation of the modern man who is quick to blame the victim and is not at all interested in any systemic change.
The issue with The Calendar Killer is that it doesn’t really want to explore this particular mindset in great detail and is focused on pulling the rug from underneath the audience’s feet. Hence, Kolmerer spends the major chunk of his film’s runtime devising all kinds of red herrings and depicting abuse in some of the most grotesque ways imaginable in order to immerse you so deep into the plot that you fail to connect the dots until he wants you to. That said, there’s a huge chasm between wanting to pull off something and actually executing it in a competent fashion, and Kolmerer unfortunately falls right into it. The pacing, the visual storytelling, and just the overall vibe of the movie are so dull that by the time the final reveal happens, you would have played enough guessing games to correctly decipher the identity of the murderer. And since Kolmerer doesn’t allow that revelation to truly marinate, so that the differences or similarities between the self-proclaimed vigilante and the domestic abuser become apparent, the whole exercise feels like a chore rather than a thought-provoking piece of art. Add to that the final montage of women living their lives and the intertitle filled with statistical data about how many women face abuse, and even the film’s intent seems suspicious.
Despite my apprehensions about The Calendar Killer, I won’t deny that the performances in the film are great. I really liked Luise Heyer’s work in Dark, and I think she is great in this film in the role of Klara. Although the writing forces her character to go through all kinds of hell, Heyer manages to depict her character’s resilience in a relatable way. Sabin Tambrea’s calm and composed demeanor is what makes Jules a pretty layered individual. If you are not totally put off by the film’s ending, I think you might feel compelled to give it a rewatch just for Tambrea. Friedrich Mucke will make you hate his guts, which is the point of his character; hence, that’s a job well done. The supporting cast is good. And that’s what makes me wish that all of the actors were in the hands of storytellers who sincerely wanted to talk about how so many women are stuck between an explicitly evil man and a subtly evil man instead of going for a cheap plot twist. Is the movie worth watching, though? If you can stomach some of the gratuitous stuff, yes, you can watch it. Additionally, as mentioned before, it has one of the wildest depictions of a vigilante, and the acting is decent. So, give it a go and let me know what you think about it via the comments section below.
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