French auteur David Moreau delivers one of the year’s most disturbing and awe-inspiring horror vehicles
Young Romain (Milton Riche) is living his best life–it’s his birthday, celebrating with best friends, no parents, and plenty of drugs. Gifted a new drug from his usual dealer, Romain gets sky-high before speeding off in his father’s Mustang–until he’s flagged down by a bandaged woman in a hospital gown. Drenching him in blood, Romain is caught in the moral quandary of being arrested by whoever answers his calls for help. He tries to sit the situation out at home–until girlfriend Anaïs (Lucille Guillaume) appears to whisk him off to a house party. This chance encounter kicks off the nonstop apocalyptic fury set within a small French suburb in MadS, a delicious real-time, one-take horror that David Moreau directs with an effortless flourish and unsparing bleakness.
Following in the tradition of Gaspar Noe’s Climax or Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria as well as his own paranoid thriller Ils, David Moreau’s zombie apocalypse unfolds with mounting dread, turning its main characters’ bloodstreams into ticking time bombs before they succumb to the mysterious plague taking hold of them. Steeped in Euphoria-like French party culture, the gruesome tension spills out amid nonstop flashing lights and booming house music, effectively fusing their transformation with the chilling paralysis of an overstimulating anxiety attack. Trapped within the immediacy of its single-take format, information comes at a trickle and terrors come from nowhere, rooting us feverishly within our leads’ tenuous mental state.
Because of the central drug’s hallucinatory properties–we’re quickly telegraphed that we can’t trust anything of what we see. Is Romain caught in the crossfire of some sinister medical experiment, or is he just having the worst trip of his life? Are their sharp, snarling tics and glowing eyes the early signs of catastrophic infection, or the consequence of some severely tainted stuff? It’s MadS’ bleak selling point to be removed from nearly all context or comfort, delivering a visceral, real-time primal scream of a thrill ride. It’s a conceit that proves infectious as various characters succumb to the madness, and is a gruesome evolution of Ils’ moment-to-moment suspense, as well as the experimental in-the-moment horror of Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [REC].
It’s also an approach that’s clearly demanding of leads Milton Riche, fellow partier Laurie Pavy, and especially Lucille Guillaume, which all three meet with disturbing determination. Under Moreau’s beautifully choreographed chaos, Riche, Pavy, and Guillaume carefully translate each of their character’s descent into depravity through gradual shifts in body language and mental acuity until they reach a very bloody breaking point. While Riche’s hapless teen effectively introduces us to a world slowly going Mad(S), Lucille Guillaume gives an astonishing breakout performance. Reminiscent of Garance Marillier in fellow French gorefest Raw, Guillaume’s Anaïs reels from betrayal and bemusement before realizing the disturbing scope of what this night has in store for her. Moreau and Guillaume are more than eager to trap us within Anaïs’ thrilling subsequent rampage, pivoting between earnest terror and girlish glee on a dime. The characters’ self-revulsion as they indulge in their disturbing impulses is wrenching to witness, infusing such pandemonium with gripping emotional clarity.
Equally fascinating is how Moreau’s apocalypse never compromises this laser-focus on character, instead remaining very much a background element. As characters flee down empty city streets, the sounds of distant explosions and gunfire from mysterious law enforcement draw closer and closer to home, blurring the line between a chaotic party night and the terror of a domestic war zone. It’s hard here not to think of the inspiring bleakness of George Romero’s The Crazies or Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, both of which effectively channeled the shambling, blank slates of traditional Zombies into an all-too-human menace and rage. This new, one-take context takes this to new heights, as we helplessly see just how these vivacious teens slip away into the depths of monstrousness. In a France plagued with social instability, ruled by forces shifting on unpredictable yet powerful whims, there’s a brooding power to MadS’ imagery. These youths’ entire world seems destined to be swallowed by chaos one way or another. Understandably, the only thing they can do is rave to the grave and lose themselves to whatever madness the night has in store.
MadS had its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024, with a streaming debut on Shudder coming October 18th.
