Climax (2018) - Movie Review

 

Even considering his knack for exposing the truly terrifying parts of the human psyche, Gaspar Noé’s latest effort starts off deceptively normal. A group of hip-hop dancers are rehearsing for an international tour, with all kinds of glorious 90’s hip-house blaring in the background, going through their paces in a dizzying display of physicality. Noé’s long-time collaborator Benoît Debie captures the initial dance sequence brilliantly, balancing cinematic framing with theatrical space to create an engine of raw kinetic energy.

From there, things wind down with the after-party, with the dancers being catty about each other like this escaped a kitschy reality show set, and they’re all enjoying themselves… until they discover that someone spiked their sangria with LSD.

What follows can only be described as a chemical descent into hell, one made of searing paranoid and convulsing flesh. The initially energetic dancing takes a much darker turn, becoming a showing of unhindered physical emotion that captures true internal horror in a way that mere words could never capture. The camera work keeps with Noé’s penchant for excruciating displays of human decline as it happens, never giving respite as we watch the dancers devolve into something more bestial.

Between the camera work, the rare but well-utilised editing, the hazy approach to colour and the outright unsettling performances, this feels like it’s going for a Fear And Loathing-esque depiction of actual drug effects. And even without having tried for myself, it’s genuinely difficult to argue with this. When a film requires a period of re-adjustment to reality after leaving the cinema, it must have done something right. Or possibly something hideously wrong, as this film goes from somewhat tedious to grey-matter-scorching so jarringly that by the time you’ve mentally adjusted to the change-up, what you’re witnessing makes you wish you didn’t.

This is not an easy film to recommend. It’s a fucking harrowing experience, one built on all things visceral and astoundingly unpleasant, and it could work very well as the greatest anti-drug PSA ever made. But an experience it remains, and for those who want to feel something when watching a movie, even the unpleasant shit, it is certainly an experience worth having.