MadS
Written and directed by David Moreau
Produced by Les Enfants Terribles
Originally released September 21, 2024
Whenever a director chooses to shoot a movie in one-take, they invite a level of scrutiny that runs the risk of distracting people from the story they’re trying to tell. Audiences have long been divided on the single shot, and so it needs to be a calculated risk on the part of the filmmaker. The script must outshine the gimmick, or the viewers will spend their time dissecting approach instead of plot. Luckily for David Moreau, director of MadS, the gamble paid off.
A few things drew me to this French horror film. The trailer promised a surreal and highly gory experience, which Moreau efficiently delivers on. But it was also the prospect of a familiar horror trope cast in a new light. What starts as a zombie outbreak quickly morphs into a psychotropic fever dream in which a sleepy, French town is torn limb-by-limb by a new kind of living dead.
From the moment the title card hits, Moreau signals his heart-pounding intent: this film will be fast, and this film will be unrelenting, so buckle up. After scoring some drugs for his birthday, eighteen-year-old Romain sets out for an evening of partying. The entire opening sequence is set to the song Computerstaat by German post-punk band Abwärts and helps tee up an instant feeling of excitement and dread. Along the way, Romain accidentally picks up an unexpected passenger: a manic woman who stabs herself to death in his car. Covered in her blood, he must race home before anyone sees what happened.
From here, it becomes clear that this is a film less about zombies and more about a strange kind of madness. Romain is infected with a contagious mania, and as he’s dragged to a house party by friends, everyone in the city is now at risk. It’s here that we meet our film’s co-protagonists, Anaïs and Julia, each of whom will take turns carrying the story through an increasingly more violent second and third act. The film ends with a climax so large in scope that you’re left retracing your steps, marveling at how such a small inciting incident could take us from bad to worse.
At its heart, MadS is an interpersonal drama between three friends. You could forgive someone for not noticing, given the escalating chaos, but the story ultimately works because the script is tight and the character journeys are relatable (at least in the sense that everyone was once young and in love and made bad decisions).
Moreau layers on top of this a few clever tricks to make what was ultimately a short story into a proper feature-length film. I was especially impressed by the visual and auditory storytelling, which helps extend the story while keeping a satisfying pace and tension. The sound design flows effortlessly between the margins, creating moments of genuine terror and silly humor for scenes that could otherwise fall flat. And it wasn’t until my second watch that I spotted how much the color red has been baked into nearly every frame of this movie. From the lighting to the set pieces, Moreau is constantly playing with the audiences’ subconscious by punctuating every moment, leaving nothing to waste. Not to mention the blood, of which this film has a lot, and is also very, very red.
And while MadS isn’t a traditional zombie story, it is enough of one to make a meaningful contribution to the genre. Instead of mindless, flesh-eating monsters, the movie presents us with an arguably more devastating option, in which the infected are heaved emotionally back and forth between moments of complete sobriety and bouts of giggling fury. This results in characters often juggling sorrow and joy in the same breath, which all the actors pull off admirably.
Of course, their efforts are made even more impressive when we stop to remember that MadS was filmed in one continuous take. In an interview with Polygon1, Moreau explained how the cast and crew shot the film not once, not twice, but five times before they got it right. “I needed this movie to be as truthful and as honest as possible,” he says. “So when I had this idea of making a oner—it has to be one take. So we shot five days and we had five takes. The first day was a disaster. The second day was a disaster. And the three last days were actually the movie from the beginning to the end. The movie you saw is the last take we did on Friday.”
It’s impossible to watch MadS without your mind drifting to the logistics of production. In the opening sequence, Romain steps outside his drug dealer’s house, and it’s very clearly dusk. I found myself cataloging all the challenges of filming a movie in an environment that’s losing daylight by the minute (something that feeds the plot later). But I’m surprised by how quickly I started to forget the gimmick as I found myself immersed in the intimacy it created. Even in the slower, more drawn-out scenes, in which characters are driving from one side of town to the other, Moreau takes advantage of the time he has, subtly moving the interpersonal drama forward to keep the audience engaged.
While it’s garnered positive reviews across the internet, it’s a wonder to me that MadS wasn’t an even bigger success upon release. Although I think it’s safe to assume that the current zeitgeist is moving away from horror that feels a little too close to reality, especially on the heels of covid. Still, there’s a lot to appreciate about this film and the cast’s efforts. I’m looking forward to whatever David Moreau cooks up next.
1. https://bit.ly/4keDCAd
