MadS (David Moreau, 2024)
"I'm going to eat your fucking face Julia!"
Movies indulging in the “shot in one take” gimmick (regardless of whether the film actually was or just cleverly edited to look like it) can be hit or miss. The novelty of the form dictates that a good portion of the film will be inevitably spent following the back of someone’s head, that there will be dull stretches because the film can’t cut away to something else more interesting happening elsewhere, and that the audience will be distracted each time the camera pans through a shadow or goes into an extreme close up on some surface by wondering whether there’s any cheating going on.
MadS is not immune to these potholes, especially in its first half, when the film follows teen Romain on what should be a fun night out: partying, getting high, and sowing his wild oats.
But a strange thing happens on the way home from visiting his drug dealer — an injured girl jumps in his car.
She’s hysterical. Terrified. She can’t communicate with him, so she tries to play a dictaphone recording which suggests she’s an escaped test subject from somewhere. But he isn’t paying attention. He’s terrified and hysterical — even more so after she vomits blood all over him, then violently stabs herself to death. Not wanting to call the police with all those narcotics on hand, he winds up driving home with the girl’s body in his car.
And then he promptly freaks out. Fair enough.
But this is a one-shot movie and so things have to happen quickly. So, mere minutes later, Romain acquiesces to peer pressure and heads to a local house party. And there, things start to get really strange…
By now you might have figured out where this is going. It’s a zombie movie. The girl in Romain’s car was infected, she spread it to him, and then he spreads it to others…
And it’s just as these pieces slot into place that things get crazy, and the film really hits its stride.
Transitioning its focus to Romain’s kinda-girlfriend, Anais, we follow her across town as she transforms from a slutty party bitch into a fully-fledge zombie.
If there’s any justice in the world, the actor who plays Anais, Laurie Pavy, is destined to become a future star. Her performance is amazing. She snarls and laughs and twitches in a tour de force display as her distraught humanity is robbed from her and she succumbs to her fate as a blood-hungry killing machine.
There’s also a great sequence where she pursues another character — taunting her from a distance then rapidly chasing after her. The scene is shot brilliantly, making perfect use of the one-shot form.
Indeed, the whole film makes great use of the format in which it’s filmed. It’s an inventive twist on the outbreak genre, telling a familiar story in a fresh and unique way.
MadS isn’t just a gimmicky horror movie, though. It also has some arthouse in its genes, perhaps most obviously in its use of sound. For although the movies is filmed as a one-shot, the sound is freer to occasionally do its own thing: and there are times where it overlaps or un-syncs or just drops out altogether, to help underscore the mental turmoil of whichever character we’re following at the time.
MadS is a very impressive film, and an absolute joyride to experience. Do yourself a favor and check it out ASAP.
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