MadS
This year at Fantastic Fest, “Mads” was the talk of the town. I think of this film as “George A. Romero’s ‘Run Lola Run’” and it is a wonderful mixture of chaos like only George Romero can do. I was kind of watching the film in a one shot camera motion freak out for about 90 minutes, and there is ample action in the story. But like almost all of Romero, it’s also about the apocalypse and the survivors living in such a world drenched in blood. (There is a lot of zombie esque influences babying in the infected characters with cute but disturbing body jerks). Cut to the film ‘Ils’ and this time the director David Moreau wants control over your eye balls with his directorial debut. He is a winner amongst today’s elevated horror era, turning the tables to embrace constructive chaos horror. Not everything has to have a purpose in the narrative. There are times when a simple enjoyment is all one wants. Who would say no to a thrilling quest ride?
The movie “Mads” begins with a young man named Romain (Milton Riche) who is at his dealer’s house, trying out ‘something’ that will be taken later to his girlfriend and their ‘clan’ for a party. While coming back to the city, he throws a cigarette while driving and pulls over to check the damages on Daddy’s car when suddenly a bandaged and deformed woman reaches the back seat. She doesn’t want to get out and even though there’s no way for her to talk, she has recorded what sounds like an experiment done on her in a lab nearby. Now she’s out of that lab. When he starts the combination and drives away, all the bad things happen at once and first the lady starts stabbing herself pulling his bloody face all over the window of the car. His night is not what anyone would expect. To say his night is ruined would be an understatement.
“MadS” once again has been shot in a one shot. This sequence is about how Romain comes back to his home with a dead woman in his car and how he washes her blood off himself. Quite an interesting part from Moreau’s film. Moreau’s Oner in this sequence is great and feels very spontaneous and natural. Romain is clearly baffled by the situation since Daddy is coming back in a day and it is reasonable to expect that most of the things will change when he comes back to the car and sees that his companion is not there. He unreasonably goes on a sortie despite the fact that he has Anaïs (Lucille Guillaume) and he is losing his sanity. The show must go on.
The event is about to draw to an end for all but, once again, Moreau is able to keep his agile camera panning across the havoc in rather a more understated fashion than the usual case of one shot films. It’s not so much about exhibitionism as it is about controlling the viewpoint. There is no chance of cutting to the other angle to know what is happening or zooming into a character who has been edged out, somewhere in the other corner of the town. The pleasure of a cut is not permitted. The nature of the game is such, we are left running. It is this restrictive POV perspective that provides and assists the energy of ‘Mad S’ which it would not have possessed otherwise, adding to the disorientation by disassociating us from everything else but a single character, trying almost to run with its scared heroes. What it does do is make ‘Mad S’ feel far from most of the films it took inspiration from and provide a new twist to an old idea.
‘Mad S’ is downright painful, at around the halfway mark in the film where Romain steps back giving focus to the stunning Lucille Guillaume, I understood that the characters were going to meet a tragic end. However, the gore has pockets of dark, sadistic laughter. Fans of horror always try to reinvent some of the oldest plots and this one will sell. There have been scores of narratives about apocalypse. However, this should be a first.
Also, Watch On Putlocker.