Romain, high on a new drug, helps a young woman off the road. His helpfulness sets off a series of horrifying events which culminates with the undoing of Romain's girlfriend Anataïs and her friend, Julia.
The director does a good job of keeping the camera angle claustrophobically focused on the main characters, keeping us in the dark about what might be happening outside their direct line of sight. It also keeps us in the dark about whether we are watching the characters trip badly on drugs or if something more sinister is going on with the world. This creates a harrowing and frustrating experience for the movie goer.
As with most new French horror, the feel of the film is raw. It's like watching someone apply the hard cold knife of uncaring reality to the warm but fleshy meat of normal and decent humanness. A lot of slimy blood and a lot of tears. And of course a lot of that deliberately uglified French too fast-paced to follow for a non-native speaker.
The thing with these new French horror flicks is that you are not supposed to like them. There is no revelation, no salvation, no heroics and no solution. There is no beauty, roundedness or meaning. It's basically gore, frustration and claustrophobia. Frustration I think is the main takeaway; frustration with the inadequacy of the characters, with the non-resolution of the plot and with the very few explanations offered. Now, I'm not sure that necessarily means this is a bad movie. Personally, I think frustration is a valid feeling to pursuit for a horror director.
The flaws I see in the movie have more to do with how lazily the two main themes - drugs and pathogens - were connected. Drug psychosis provides interesting plots for horror movies, as do pathogens. But they have fairly little in common. Maybe this is just another way to frustrate the audiences, but I though the movie could have done more with these two basic premises.
