Kids! Don’t do drugs!
Unless you want to slowly transform into a cackling, bloodthirsty Deadite.
Writer-director David Moreau and his camera crew of French daredevils have assembled MadS, a micro-zombie tale that maintains a breathless pace, thanks to it being filmed in one exhausting take!
For 89 minutes nonstop minutes, we tag along with Romain (Milton Riche), a swinging teen (?) on his 18th (?) birthday, as he visits his dealer driving a classic Mustang convertible.
After snorting several lines of a dark red powder, Romain scores a few bindles of the stuff and blasts off through the French countryside in his sweet ride, soon to be tripping balls.
At this early stage, we almost envy the lad. It’s his dad’s car but Romain cuts a dashing figure behind the wheel, like Jean-Paul Belmondo or something.
As the powerful drugs take hold of his system his special birthday night rapidly degenerates into hell. He inadvertently gives a ride to a feral madwoman who seems to be on the run from nefarious forces.
Romain, who is expected to be at a blowout rager for his birthday, instead brings the nonverbal, unstable refugee to his father’s fancy house—and loses track of her.
The constant motion of the narrative gives MadS a major advantage in holding our attention. I realized while watching it, that I was standing up for much of the time. That’s called tension and it just keeps coming.
There’s a particular scene with a woman riding a scooter, trying to outrace an infected friend who is madly pursuing on foot and calling out to her that burns like a fuse.
The visual excitement is top drawer throughout. Moreau’s sensibility is slick, sleek, and sleazy, and MadS rates highly as finely-crafted, Old World, Eurotrash with a pedal that’s always on the metal.
The movie dovetailed nicely with my reading a trilogy of post-apocalyptic books by English author Rich Hawkins (The Last Plague, The Last Outpost, and The Last Soldier; recommended!) that are really grim.
And so is this. But it kicks major ass.
horrificflicks.com 