User Reviews

No matter how many times I see this one, I always get chills from the teaser for this one. There's something truly horrible about a poor kid dying just because his brother happens to be a bit of a jerk. Of course, this being The X-Files, there's a little more to it than that, but still... ugh, just horrible.

"The Calusari" does what The X-Files does best, which is to play with the familiar, the foreign and the totally alien. Without knowing much about Eastern European folklore, the references and the overall feel of the episode are convincing enough that the supernatural parts are that much creepier. The family drama is intriguing, and the fear of the mother is palpable and seems totally genuine. The scenes during the exorcism are fantastic, and the central idea - the notion of a child haunted by his twin - is quite genuinely disturbing. It's a little unfortunate in that context that this episode follows "Humbug" so closely!

The Calusari the Limerick:

A little boy has an evil twin

Who really likes to commit sin

He kills his little brother

Then his father and grandmother

Till the mom lets the Calusari in.

What a great episode. This is one of the scarier and darker episodes on the show in my opinion. Simply put, the episode seems to combine elements of The Exorcist and Romanian superstition. Members of a family start dying, and upon investigation, Mulder thinks that there is a ghost doing it. Soon however his suspicions turn to the boys grandmother who is an old Romanian lady who is constantly performing strange rituals such as tossing chicken guts on the roof. When she then dies, suspicion turns toward the little boy Charlie who is not a typical happy child. He is wonderfully played by a creepy little kid who you may remember from Season 1's Conduit. We finally find out that he had a twin brother who was stillborn and who now is apparently acting as a sort of evil twin doppleganger ghost. Just a really good creepy episode. 9 out of 10.

The Calusari is about Mulder and Scully investigating the mysterious death of a two-year-old boy, at an amusement park.

An excellent episode, engrossing and clever. The opening sequence equally memorable as the superb ending. The title is those who perform the exorcism, that Mulder seeks out to put an end to it. The kid actor Joel Palmer, terrific. Vibuti, the holy ash present at the crime scene. No idea how I retained that information before Chuck said it, heh. I like Bill Dow's appearances throughout the series, though brief. Not sure where the Munchausen by Proxy comes in though. Duchovny's disturbed looks during the exorcism are classic.

"Neither innocence nor vigilance may be protection against the howling heart of evil." - Fox Mulder.

Episode 21, 'The Calusari', written by Sara B. Charno, directed by Michael Vejar. Monster of the week episode count, 31. Charno's second script borrows heavily from films like 'The Exorcist' (1973) and 'The Omen' (1976) which challenge the traditional archetypal villain, in some cases the personification of the Devil, by having a child embody this evil. This can be highly effective at terrifying audiences, as the juxtaposition of innocence and purity, that we associate with a child, with the malevolent and destructive force of pure evil, can be very unsettling. At the same time however, this concept can easily become comical. The 'evil child' trope is often unsuccessful at being genuinely scary since the execution of the idea is riding so heavily on the performance of an often inexperienced actor. The question here is where does 'The Calusari' fall in it's attempt at dramatic horror? For the most part it sticks the landing and despite sometimes missing the mark it's largely successful even though it's wholly unoriginal. This was the only X-Files episode in the life of the series to receive a UK '18' rating for featuring the death of a small child and the overall disturbing nature of the premise. Joel Palmer returns once again to the series to play the 'devil child', he was featured in season one's forgettable entry, 'Conduit'.

The episode begins with a boy, Charlie (Joel Palmer) witnessing his little brother walk on to the tracks of an amusement park's tour train while following a runaway balloon. He is killed and his death ruled an accident. However Charlie's grandmother fears that the boy is cursed, death follows him and she is desperately trying to expel the evil she believes originated from Charlie's father. The grandmother calls for the help of the Calusari mystics to help her perform ancient rituals in the boys home. Charlie's mother is Romanian, as is the grandmother, and it's a little odd that the writer would choose the word Calusari for these men as Romanian 'Călușari' were traditional acrobatic dancers. This was one of the criticisms for the episode brought up by Romanian fans. Semantics aside, the group attempt to perform rituals to exorcise Charlie. They are ultimately successful but not before the evil claims several lives.

The aforementioned tightrope of comedy and horror that this episode traverses holds steady for the most part though there are a few slips here and there. One such moment that was written to be scary but comes of as funny is when Michael, Charlie's twin brother who has materialized from the dead, says "What are you doing Mummy?" They pushed a little hard with this line and it comes off as a forced attempt at being creepy. Yet at other points in the episode Palmer is actually quite convincing, such as when he is violently resisting the exorcism or when his twin is about to stab Scully, he manages to pull off a credible menacing presence, no small feat for a child actor.

The opening and closing sequences are probably the two strongest moments in the show, and this helps carry some of the dead weight and loose ends that were not thoroughly explored during the course of the episode. Such as the grandmother's claims that the father is the devil or a demon. This is never explored to any great length, we start to get a sense at one point that there may be some truth to this claim but it's left wide open after his 'accidental' death at the hands of the garage door opener motor. The grandmother claims at one point that the boy is evil because the father is evil, but then later on we learn that the evil actually stems from the fact that Charlie's twin brother Micheal died at birth and the proper soul separating ceremony was not performed. Supposedly this mean that death will now follow Charlie throughout his life. What, if anything, this has to do with her earlier accusations against the father is underdeveloped. A positive addition is that we're treated to the first appearance of Chuck Burk (Bill Dow) whom Mulder will call upon at various times throughout the series for his unique take on all things paranormal. This is a character I always felt could have been given more screen time and was unfortunately under used.

An aspect that I enjoyed about the climax was that both Mulder and Scully witness equally terrifying and unexplained events. Mulder watches as the evil force is drawn from Charlie's body as he thrashes around in the hospital bed. Looking for perhaps the first time genuinely frightened and confused by what he is witnessing. At the same time Scully enters the family home to find the mother pinned to the ceiling and Michael advancing upon her with a knife, only to vanish in to thin air moments later leaving behind a small pile of ash, or 'vibhuti' the residual sign of spiritual energy. There is a sense at the end of the episode that both agents have experienced something profound, they can neither can fully explain or understand it and both have been moved by the event. The fact that we don't see a conversation between them were Scully tries to use science to justify the occurrence gives the impression that for once she can't explain it in any rational sense. It's about time.

This episode reminds me a lot of Season 1's 'Born Again'. It suffers from plot holes, weak acting, weak writing and a couple of dull moments.

But it is saved by the very satisfying conclusion and cool and creepy atmosphere.

The episode is a decent twist to the Exorcist story, with some really creepy and disturbing deaths. And I am mostly referring to the teaser, where Charlie's two-year old brother is killed by a little train. It's disturbing because it was a cute little innocent child.

I am going to give this episode *** stars for the brilliant finale of this otherwise not-so great episode.

That was one of my favourite x files episode, i really love it, it actually gave me goosebumps. The boy was really great playing the crazy dead brother :D The ending scenes when they were killing the evil spirit was amazing :D Actually its what made the episode great, The actress who played the mum was meh, anderson and David didn't do anything special, but the boy and the wacky grandma were really good, as for the group of magician(( don't know what to call them)) were doing a good job, i thought that they were real magicians, this episode is in my list for the x files best episodes, may be not the best x files episode but it was fun and scary, kudos,,,

The X Files used the creepy possessed child trope very well in this episode. Much of the praise has to go to the young actor who played the dual roles of Charlie and Michael, he really had that Damion esque quality about him. Also props to the actress who played the grandmother with a real sense of menace about her although in the end it was revealed her intentions were good.

Scullys sceptical approach worked in this episode for me as there was a lot of convincing evidence that the crime itself was indeed committed by somebody suffering from Munchausen By Proxy syndrome. I get it was originally her job to counter Mulders arguments with science and fact but she was a little naive at times with this approach considering the many many unexplained things she had seen by this point and would go on to see.

There was a movie with similar topic , an evil kid. It remembered me that movie which I had seen years ago.

In this movie, we see ezoteric people those speak in different language. We see Romanian culture. And calusari. According to wikipedia: a Romanian fraternal secret society who practiced a ritual acrobatic dance known as the calus.

Scully saw another non-scientific event and I hope she won say again "but it cant happen according to scientific rules.".

And I wonder how they wrote for reports. For latest episodes, we did not see how scully wrote reports. For this case, they cant write "the evil soul killed". It must be hard for scully :)

In the end, those sayings were really hard and nice:

"Neither innocence nor vigilance may be protection against the howling heart of evil."

They can be protected against even aliens but not against those spiritual things.

Not for anything, but the actor playing the twin brothers Charlie/Michael Holvey (Joel Palmer) was sensational during the exorcism scene when the Calusari were holding him down to get rid of his demons. I'd say as good as Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" but without the makeup. He actually did look pretty scary.

But as for the cut away scene back to the Holvey home where Michael was getting ready to put the hurt on Scully - why would Scully just lay there waiting for the kid to take his best shot? That seemed way out of character for her, but I guess it was a way for the writers to heighten tension, knowing nothing could happen to her for the sake of the show.

A whole host of ritual elements and symbols make for a creepy episode, and the comment from the senior Romanian elder to Mulder about the demonic entity knowing who he was made it sound like a return trip might be in order later in the series. It might have been interesting to test those waters again later on but I don't believe they ever did.

Even though this was one of your more somber X-Files, I had a comic reaction to that scene of Grandmother Golda (Lilyan Chauvin) doing the ritual ceremony in the dining room of the Holvey home the first time with The Calusari. Though a couple of roosters were involved, I couldn't help thinking about a song from one of my current favorite musical groups, The Zac Brown Band, when they wrap up their 'Foundation' album with the humorous tune - 'Sic 'em on a Chicken'. My mind works in strange ways sometimes.

Scary and entertaining episode. It had some similarities with the Satanist episode. As it addresses demonic activity and possession. I was impressed by the story and the character development. The innocent boy and his evil still born brother who was never really dead made a great story.

I felt as though the mother was very naive and vilified her own mother multiple times without seeing the value of her help. I also fell for the trap as she was doing way too much to point to her being behind the death of her step son and grandson.

I'm happy mulder did seek the council of the professional Calusari's to rid the world of this evil that will be gone for now. Albeit mulder is now known to this entity and seemingly will be back for him.

Was good to see scully get a sense of some non scientific paranormal activity. Hard to hold science as the utmost when you're choking 5 ft in the air against a wall by an invisible force.

Okay okay the episode as a whole want that bad. It was suspenseful and eerie.

However, I, as a Romanian, am very disappointed. The actors who spoke Romanian should have practiced a bit more for their accents were completely unnatural and odd and a few times merely spoke gibberish.

Second of all the episode is title "The Calusari", which is quit misleading for as we Romanians know, Calusari are a certain type of dancers, NOT some people who "are responsible for the correct observance of sacred rites" that's bullshit.

But other than these disappointing factors, it was all right.

Taken out of context, this episode would probably have been a standard 7 out of 10, on a par with an average X Files episode. However, when compared to a certain other film, similarities make me think that the writers could have done a better job with originality. Admittedly, they did change a lot - events leading up to the exorcism are completely different - Romanian folklore instead of Catholicism, the Grandmother, the deaths leading up to the climax... In this, they did succeed in making an original plot. And the Romanian part of the storyline in general was very good. But for me, this cannot save the fact that the ending lets this episode down.

My opinion, of course. Feel free to disagree.