David Moreau’s Gaspar Noé-inspired, disorientating trip to hell is a love letter to the very foundations of horror. From its stunning performances and direction to its use of sound and POV camera work, MadS is a terrifying triumph. MadS is streaming now on Shudder.
If you are looking for the perfect Halloween night movie this year. Stop. You just found it. David Moreau’s (Them) single-shot, rollercoaster ride to hell, isn’t just a mesmerising work of art with sublime sound design, enthralling performances and unstoppable momentum; it is bloody terrifying. Moreau’s MadS is a perfect example of the “less is more” horror approach, where sound design, performance, and cinematography combine to create true terror that lingers in the mind long after the credits have rolled.
Moreau’s film may owe much to George A. Romero’s classic zombie flicks in the horror that runs through its veins, but its artistic heart has far more in common with Gaspar Noé’s Climax, as a drug-fueled party becomes a terrifying fever-dream of no escape. MadS opens with Romain (Milton Riche) sorting out the night’s shopping list of drugs at his dealer’s place. It’s Romain’s birthday, and with his dad out of town, he is planning one hell of a party with his girlfriend, Anaïs (Laurie Pavy), and friends. Before he leaves, he quickly tests the new, unknown drug he has purchased before climbing into his dad’s classic sports car and driving off.
However, as he drives home, high as a kite, he drops his cigarette onto his lap and is forced to pull over. On the side of the road, as he inspects the car seat for any damage, a bloodied and mutilated woman without a tongue suddenly appears from nowhere before climbing into the passenger seat and refusing to leave. He drives on, believing her to need hospital treatment. But as the woman becomes more and more volatile, the drive becomes a living nightmare, and by the time Romain arrives home, he is covered in her blood, his nerves shredded, and his brain unable to compute what to do next. But Romain’s birthday is about to get a whole lot worse.
MadS can be viewed from two distinct angles, one a bleak and terrifying tale of a horrible trip on a new substance and the other an age-old story of mass infection, attempted containment and apocalypse; whichever you opt for, it’s a phenomenal reinvention of both, that does not need elaborate special effects or buckets of gore, just a POV camera that places us, the audience, in the shoes of Romain before smoothly shifting our perspective to his girlfriend, Anaïs and her friend Julia (Lucille Guillaume).
Far from being a gimmick, as it so often is in modern filmmaking, using one-shot filming creates a growing sense of the walls closing in on Romain, Anaïs and then Julia as they are slowly consumed by the events surrounding them in differing ways. David Moreau’s Gaspar Noé-inspired, disorientating trip to hell is a love letter to the very foundations of horror. From its stunning performances and direction to its use of sound and POV camera work, MadS is a terrifying triumph.
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