Netflix
On Chalet, a group of friends gathers at a picturesque chalet in an isolated French village with a dark history.
When menacing events and diabolical traps put everyone in danger, the friends must scramble to discover the truth before its too late.
The Chalet, Episode 1
The episode opens with a man claiming his innocence for some mysterious criminal events that took place at a chalet in an isolated French village called Valmoline.
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Sometime earlier, Manu and his pregnant fiancée Adèle arrive in Valmoline, while unbeknownst to them there is a man tied up in the woods under the bridge they cross into the village. Manu grew up in Valmoline and they’re back in town for his friend Laurent’s wedding. When they arrive they are greeted by Laurent’s father Phillipe, his sister Muriel, and family friend Paul. Paul later gets lured by a menacing teddy bear and gets killed. Gaspard is the man tied up under the bridge.
Twenty years earlier, a family of four arrives at the chalet. Françoise grew up in the village. She takes her children Julien and Amélie to meet her misanthropic cousin Alexandre, who lives as a hermit and warns them to leave the village. Jean-Louis, the husband, goes into town and meets Muriel, who runs the bar, and the initially antagonistic Etienne, Paul, and Gaspard.
Adèle is secretly disturbed as she hallucinates blood seeping out of the floorboards. Manu and Adèle go to meet the rest of the wedding party at the train station, which includes Manu’s best friend Alice, and Sébastien, the man giving the statement at the beginning of the episode. Sébastien is a jerk who has been obsessed with Alice since childhood.
As they drive across the bridge back into the village, a huge rock falls from the cliffs above and smashes the bridge behind them, cutting them off from the outside world.
Who is killing the villagers and does it have something to do with what happened 20 years ago? What’s up with Adèle? Was the rockfall intentional or just some kind of freak accident?
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The Chalet, Episode 2
Gaspard — beneath the bridge — was crushed in the rockfall. Not only are they trapped in the village, but there’s no cell reception, landline, internet, or any way to contact help. Everyone’s just happy to be alive though, so they drink wine and have a nice dinner. They plan to hike to the relay station tomorrow.
A shadowy figure sneaks into Tiphaine’s (the bride) room with a portable wi-fi device and texts her mom that the wedding has been postponed and not to come. Another — or the same — shadowy figure sets a wolf trap during the night. Adèle continues to hear weird sounds, have nightmares, and even decides to hide inside a cupboard.
The next day a group goes to the relay station. Laurent steps into the trap and goes into shock. The relay has been sabotaged and is unfixable, so there is still no way to contact help.
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20 years earlier, Alice and Julien, who have become sweethearts, are ambushed by Sébastien and his gang (Laurent and Thierry). They tie Alice to a tree and strip Julien and tie him to stakes on the ground. Jean-Louis confronts Etienne (Sébastien’s dad) about his son’s bullying. He confides in Muriel and Julien later catches them smooching in the ally. They talk about running away together. Muriel gives Jean-Louis her lottery ticket. Julien, Alice, and Manu set a clever and dangerous trap for Sébastien at their treehouse. The creepy bear that lured Paul to his death belonged to Amélie.
Unsurprisingly, Sébastien was accused of sexual harassment in 2007. His accuser mysteriously disappeared, which brings further suspicion down on him. He still says he didn’t do anything, and in the case of Valmoline he probably didn’t.
He’s a jerk, but he’s the obvious fall guy for what looks like some kind of murder plot. Will Laurent survive his wounds? Will they be able to call for help? What the heck is up with Adèle? What are the villagers hiding?
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The Chalet, Episode 3
Everyone is pretty much agreed that someone is messing with them, but they don’t know who or why. Sébastien and Alice go to see Alexandre and find newspaper clippings of the Rodiers’ disappearance in his house. Alexandre warns them to leave before there are more deaths.
Erika, Thierry’s wife, goes to town and is killed. Thierry rappels down the bridge to find help, but instead finds Erika’s body and gets killed himself. Laurent dies from his wounds. They move the body to the walk-in freezer and Manu, Olivier, and Phillipe get trapped inside.
20 years earlier, the Rodiers go missing. Alice has had some kind of head injury but she can’t remember the details. Phillipe calls the police to investigate and learns that Françoise’s mother has reported the family missing.
A search ensues and they find Amélie’s teddy bear and one of her shoes by the lake, which was planted by someone to make it look like they drowned. Before the Rodiers’ disappearance, it turns out that Jean-Louis broke up with Muriel, which could be a possible motive for killing the family.
A pattern is developing for the killings. Phillipe has a moment of resignation after being trapped in the freezer with his dead son. He seems to suspect something about the murders, some dark secret in his past that he deserves punishment for.
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The Chalet, Episode 4
20 years earlier, Phillipe, Etienne, Christine, and Muriel invade the chalet while Sébastien keeps the watch outside and Gaspard guards the road. Muriel searches Jean-Louis office and Phillipe and Etienne hold Françoise and Jean-Louis at gunpoint. Is Muriel trying to steal Jean-Louis’ book he’s written about her?
Later, the police come asking Alexandre questions about the Rodiers. Julien and Amélie are hiding in his attic. Florence blackmails Phillipe, telling him to fire Christine or else she’ll talk about what he did to the Rodiers.
Adele coincidentally saves the boys from the freezer. A screw was jamming the lock, which doesn’t look like an accident. Tiphaine reveals she is pregnant. Olivier plans to leave for help in secret.
Phillipe goes storming off with a shotgun to ask Alexandre who killed his son. Alexandre confirms that it is merely the consequences of Phillipe’s actions.
Someone sneaks up behind Phillipe and knocks him out. When he wakes up, he has Thierry and Erika’s wedding rings in his hand, implying to him that they are both dead.
Olivier and Phillipe rappel down the bridge for help but gets shot as Manu watches. Someone lures Tiphaine outside by posing as Erika, intending to shoot her down, but Alexandre stops them, saying that she never did anything to hurt them. With Alice hiding out at her father’s house in the village, Sébastien sneaks in and corners her while she’s in the shower.
Alexandre obviously knows more than he’s saying, a quiet witness to whoever is killing the villagers. I have a hunch that its the Rodier kids back for revenge, and that Adèle is actually Amélie.
That would explain her strange hallucinations and nightmares. Will Alice escape Sébastien? Do the villagers kill the Rodiers? What do they want anyway?
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The Chalet, Episode 5
The villagers kill the Rodiers for the winning lottery ticket that Muriel gave Jean-Louis. When Muriel sees the manuscript titled with her name she has second thoughts, tries to stop it, but its all too late.
They kill the parents, but the kids escape in the meantime. They hide in the same cupboard that Adele hides in later and run to Alexandre for help. They probably faked their death by the lake to evade the villagers.
Alice runs to the chalet after hearing Julien’s whistle and sees the Rodier’s bodies. Sébastien catches her, but she knocks herself out when she trips running away. She forgets everything because of her head injury.
Now Sébastien says he’s leaving Maud for Alice, which Maud knows is crazy. Sébastien raped Alice and now thinks that they’re together. Sébastien thinks that every woman starts by saying no and that you have to force them to say yes.
Etienne kills Christine when she decides to confess to the Rodier’s murder to avoid being killed herself. In her last words, she realizes that the killers are the Rodier kids. Sébastien sees the blood later and asks his dad at gunpoint if he’s the killer.
Adèle finds out about Muriel and Jean-Louis’s affair and that she loved him, which shakes her up a little. Tiphaine commits suicide by taking sleeping pills and lying down next to Laurent in the freezer.
Its pretty obvious at this point that Adèle is really Amélie, but where is Julien? He must be someone that we’ve already met, but who? And is Adèle even really pregnant? What about Manu? Who will survive the final episode?
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The Chalet, Episode 6
20 years earlier, Christine gets a call from the National Lottery about a winning ticket sold from the bar. They determine that its Muriel’s and that its worth 70 million francs. Unfortunately, she gave it to Jean-Louis.
While she meets with him at the lake, the others hatch a plan to steal back the ticket. Lean-Louis is intentionally hurtful to Muriel and now she’s out for revenge. After the murder, Alexandre sends Julien and Amélie to live with a good family. Julien swears he’ll be back to get revenge. Christine and Phillipe kill Florence to keep her quiet about the murders.
Now Muriel gives herself up and is killed by the lake. Etienne tells Sébastien that Christine was killed by the Rodier kids. They decide that Maud and Fabio must be the siblings in disguise. Sébastien abducts Fabio and they interrogate and kill him.
Adèle tells Manu the truth — she’s actually Amélie Rodier and she’s not pregnant. She holds him at gunpoint while she escapes the chalet. Alice arrives just afterwards looking for the lost Fabio. Manu tells her everything that happened and they go together to find Fabio. Amélie lures Sébastien out of his shed and Julien knocks him out — Olivier faked his death and was Julien the whole time.
Etienne captures Maud and brings her back into town, but she’s rescued when Etienne is gunned down in the street by Amélie and Julien. They frame Sébastien for all the murders, knowing the circumstantial evidence and his unstable personality will sell it as long as they can talk the others into the plot. Manu is just a downright good guy and is hard to sell, but everyone agrees in the end.
Amélie and Julien escape together and Sébastien will probably be committed to an institution after the results of his psych-eval.
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The Chalet, Review
The initial episodes are a little dense with all the different characters, their various relationships to each other, and the multiple non-linear timelines. It’s kind of fun to put it all together though and with everything happening there were some key elements that were smartly buried among more dramatic events.
I honestly totally forgot all about the lottery ticket and was stunned when that turned out to be what the villagers killed the Rodiers for. And while Adèle’s secret identity was a little obvious from the beginning, I never would have suspected Olivier as Julien.
While I understand Julien’s comment that “injustice begets injustice” — that killing Phillipe’s innocent sons and their partners was itself injustice and revenge for the injustices committed against them — it really just turns Julien and Amélie into villains almost as bad as the villagers, especially when you take into account how they used their own partners to infiltrate the village.
Their only virtue is that they didn’t kill for greed. I guess they’re both just insane. I know they wanted to kill all the old villagers, but why kill the old mail man Paul? For the life of me, I can’t see how he was involved at all.
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And the survivors’ complicity at the end really mars those characters as well. Even the good-hearted, well-meaning Manu doesn’t escape untarnished.