Movie Review: MADS

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: October 25th, 2024 / 04:22 AM

MADS movie poster | ©2024 Capella Film/Shudder

Rating: TV-MA
Stars: Lucille Guillaume, Laurie Pavy, Milton Riche, Yovel Lewkowski, Sasha Rudakowa, Vincent Pasdermadjian
Writer: David Moreau
Director: David Moreau
Distributor: Capella Film/Shudder
Release Date: October 18, 2024 (Shudder)

MADS is made to look as though it was shot in one continuous take. We know it wasn’t, of course, as it moves from day to night, indoors to outdoors and back again, and through multiple neighborhoods. The conceit does keep us on our toes, though.

We’re somewhere in France, where Romain (Milton Riche) is celebrating his eighteenth birthday by getting high on a snortable drug of unknown provenance, at the home of his dealer (Vincent Pasdermadjian). The powder gives Romain a nosebleed. Even so, Romain buys some for the road, then heads home in his dad’s vintage Mustang convertible.

When Romain drops his cigarette in the car and pulls over to retrieve it, a woman (Sasha Rudakowa) vaults into the passenger seat. Her head is bandaged, and she is sobbing and screaming wordlessly.

Romain’s first instinct is to call an ambulance, but when they tell him the police are coming, too, he hangs up because he’s carrying contraband (and is unwilling to toss it). His next impulse is to drive the woman to a hospital.

The woman has a digital recorder with her. The male voice on the playback says that “she” (presumably the woman) is test subject C39. Her teeth, tongue and salivary glands have been removed, and she’s been injected with “retrovirus-infected blood.”

At this point, most viewers will guess exactly what sort of horror movie this is, and they’ll be right. Writer/director David Moreau places us at the very beginning of the kind of story we’re more used to entering in later stages.

Moreau is stylish, using the coronas from streetlights and cell phones as visual punctuation, and playing with costumes and vehicles to add texture and variety. He also stages at least one really effective jump scare. Gore is used judiciously, appearing mainly as stains and smears until the third act.

It’s unclear whether Romain’s drugs are causally or only coincidentally involved in the action. Plotwise, the narcotics serve mainly to make the characters wonder if they’re hallucinating.

Since we can tell what’s happening, and since multiple individuals have more or less the same type of experience, the audience knows that what people are seeing and hearing isn’t just a bad trip. Consequently, teasing this aspect of the narrative seems to go on longer than it should.

Riche is natural as Romain, though the way the character is written doesn’t invite much empathy (our opinion of his intelligence diminishes throughout). Laurie Pavy elicits our concern as Romain’s worried girlfriend Anaïs, and Lucille Guillaume is likewise sympathetic as Anaïs’s best friend Julia.

MADS is a bit more preoccupied with how it presents itself than with what it’s presenting, but the results are good-looking and grow more engaging as the film proceeds.

In French, with English subtitles.

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