Rent Climax on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Gaspar Noé
Directed by: Gaspar Noé
Starring: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
French dancers gather in a remote, empty school building to rehearse on a wintry night. The all-night celebration morphs into a hallucinatory nightmare when they learn their sangria is laced with LSD.
Verdict
This movie builds a mood. This opens with an amazingly choreographed dance and then it devolves into a bad trip seen through the dancers as things go from bad to worse during the night. I don't like this movie, but I do respect what it attempts and achieves. This movie never wanted to be traditional or construct a narrative. It's a manic, depressing adventure.
Skip it.
Review
This starts with dancer interviews, seen on a tube television with movies on each side. The titles are interesting, horror movies and thrillers. They talk about their love for dance. After that is an impressive dance number.
This is a mood movie. Dancers are relaxing at a party, having fun, dancing as the party winds down. Once they start to trip things get violent and obscene. This captures a bad trip, and that seems to be the goal. The horror isn't strictly what's happening on screen, but what's happening in everyone's head. There isn't much narrative. We see this go from bad to worse. The characters slowly become more unhinged as base desires are revealed. With each scene this becomes more twisted. Much of this movie was improvised and it was shot on a short schedule.
What starts as a dance, later becomes screams just off screen as frightened characters try to escape this party that is now a prison. While this could capture the same idea in less time, the length adds to the mood. This movie wants to impart a feeling, though not a good one. It's a rough movie. At no point does it seem like it will have a happy ending. This gets worse with each scene until it finally ends.
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