Fantastic Fest 2024 Review: MADS, Wide-Eyed Descent Into Apocalypse

One of my favorite films of Fantastic Fest 2024 was this taut piece of single-take cinema from France.

An already high teen visits his dealer hoping to score the latest designer drug. But before he can get to the , he picks up a panicked woman on the side of the road. The cinematic fever dream that follows is like falling into utter chaos.

MadS may tell a familiar story but it does so with ferocious energy and style, making everything old horrific again. I can't elaborate much more than that as to plotting. Suffice to say this type of story will be familiar to almost anyone who hasn't been hiding out in a horde-proof bunker for the last ten years.

Use of the single-take technique has often resulted in highly compelling cinema. No less a luminary than Alfred Hitchcock used it to great effect in Rope (1948). True, he was limited by the amount of film per reel, forcing him to. say, end a shot on the back of a chair and start the next one on the same place pulling out from the darkness to reveal the continuing scene. The overall impact, though, was to build palpable suspense as we watch two murderers stage a dinner party for their victims friends and relatives on top of a large antique chest secretly holding the victims body.

Of late, this approach to filmmaking has been used to up the ante on just how much suspense the audience can bear. The crime thriller Victoria (2015) and Gaspar Noe's Climax (2018), which both feature long, single-take stretches, careen towards their tragic and unforgettable endings as if to say, "Don't like it? Don't watch?" MadS takes that attitude to the extreme, offering no relief to viewers.

One of the most powerful things about MadS is that its believable characters are caught up in the tawdry mechanics of teenage excess, which form a backdrop of dating betrayal, drug use, and mindless partying. As apocalypse begins, these characters are revealed for who they really are, still children, not at all ready to face what is happening, despite their efforts at acting adult. As those characters undergo monstrous changes, the destruction of their innocence is that much more disturbing.

Director David Moreau was previously responsible for the now classic Them (Ils) (2006) and the stylish, if not altogether successful, 2008 remake of the Pang Brothers' Asian horror thriller The Eye. This is bravura filmmaking, and hopefully will provide more opportunities for his singular talents.

At its heart, MadS is a horror film but it is one in which the horror seems believable and most definitely takes place in the real world. As I finish this review, Iran is currently launching ballistic missiles into Israel exploding conflict into a region that threatens to engulf the rest of the world into wide scale war.

It makes me think of MadS as a timely piece of cinema: larger forces imposing murderous mayhem on people who are just trying to live their lives. This is what we all fear in 2024: the dissolution of humanity into barbarism and madness.

The film recently screened at Fantastic Fest. It will begin streaming October 18, exclusively on Shudder.