MADS: Am I Tripping Or Is That A Monster? 

MadS is a sly, agile piece of work that creeps up behind you, slowly at first, before overtaking you with a manic smile dripping with viscera. Directed by first-timer David Moreau (Them, The Eye), this one-take, one-night scramble through a French town gone askew begins casually enough, with an effortlessly self-possessed teenager in artfully rumpled threads, Romain (Milton Riche), visiting his drug dealer. It’s only after snorting a couple of rust-colored lines does the young prince looks up to ask, “What’s in this?” The dealer shrugs: “I didn’t cook it up.” 

What comes after is a winding tale best viewed cold, directed patiently enough to really earn each twist it proffers like a cat with a juicy dead mouse in its teeth. When young Romain starts his buzzed journey home in daddy’s gorgeous vintage Mustang, he’s assailed by a wailing woman dressed in rags, covered in blood, and seemingly pursued by an organization that claims she’s a dangerous, contaminated, possibly contagious experiment. Soon, she beats herself to death against his dashboard. Is this character–– so reminiscent of the specters that haunt this year’s Cuckoo or, further back, the Resident Evil franchise–– a drug-induced hallucination or a harbinger of something far more dangerous? Though the film’s style and substance can clash, sometimes to its overall detriment, MadS still makes answering this question a fun, adrenaline-fueled, and engrossing experience best undertaken with as little prior knowledge as possible. Its blend of film school panache and admirably nuanced direction of both camera and actors make even the more familiar elements of this tale feel uncanny. 

Teenage Dirtbag

One of the more surprising successes of the first half of MadS is to make its spoiled band of upper-crust adolescents genuinely interesting to watch. Romain, it turns out, bought his bag of mystery drugs as a birthday present to himself, to be split with his girlfriend Anais (Laurie Pavy). But the body now stuffed in the trunk of his car interferes with the celebrations that his flighty friends and rich, aloof father alike have planned. After scrubbing off the mystery woman’s blood, he tries to stall the fun– and find the body, which has vanished. Nevertheless, Romain’s seeming party boy reputation outweighs his obviously suspicious behavior: His friends show up to his modernist mansion in another flashy car, blasting their horn and demanding he join the festivities. His flummoxed hijinx manages to be funny and tense in equal measure. 

The party scenes whip up a nice balance of similarly pulpy Élite-style drama (Anais is, among other things, worried Romain is losing interest in her) and off-key humor as Romain becomes increasingly frantic (and intoxicated) while attempting to hide the rotting skeleton in his closet from his father. The knowledge that something is very wrong with Romain is the urgent counterpoint to the schoolyard antics; it builds like the bad headache he’s starting to develop as psychedelic hallucinations warp his perspective and uncontrollable rage flashes in his now green-glowing eyes. After snorting a couple lines, Anais and her best friend Alice (Lucille Guillaume) don’t feel so good either. 

Late Night with the Devil

As it turns out, the symptoms the trio is experiencing are early-onset zombieism–– and it’s spreading fast. This midpoint reveal may not come as a surprise to many viewers, however, not because the script isn’t cleverly meted out, but because the film’s one-continuous-shot gambit is actively working against the intense subjectivity needed to actually pull of the film’s trippy “is it drugs or zombies?” premise. While the film’s story is paced with precision and flare, its cinematographic gimmickry is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing: It looks wonderful, combining the soft light and casual handheld look A24 has made so popular with an almost 2000s-y grittiness later on; Philip Lozano’s camera pirouettes from one character to the next so cleanly the transitions between characters’ stories are easy to miss at first glance. The curse: Oners of this nature fundamentally lend their subjects an omniscient perspective, undermining the viewer’s uncertainty about the nature of the threat. Romain, his friends, and the monster clearly exist in the same world and space, linked by the continuous shot. The monster is clearly real.

Similarly, though the psychedelic effects of the mystery drugs on Romain are rendered subjectively in a small number of scenes (the camera moving in close and blurring with his vision etc.), that same continuity undercuts this effect, forcing Moreau’s team to shoot mostly in mediums and wides as he tracks his characters through space and plot. The choice of a one-take structure for this film feels, as it often does, less like a tool to amplify this particular story and more like a braggadocious end unto itself, even if the technical virtuosity is undeniably compelling.

Conclusion 

Even as this flaw deflates the film’s “what the fuck” premises, the good news is it doesn’t lessen the film’s overall effect. Once the zombie virus really starts to sink its teeth into the characters, things escalate in creepy and surprising directions. The film’s greatest asset here is its performers who positively pounce on this new register. Laurie Pavy in particular treats the film’s third act like a nightclub ballet, cackling, twirling, and mauling with abandon. In the end, it’s this playful spirit that elevates MadS from film school exercise to wild romp. Fans of Y2K-era zombie movies like Rec or indie bad trips like Bliss are in for a treat.  

MadS is currently streaming on Shudder!