Climax

Year of Release:  2018
Director:  Gaspar Noe
Screenplay:  Gaspar Noe
Starring:  Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souhelia Yacoub, Kiddy Smile, Claude Gajan Maull, Giselle Palmer
 Running Time:  96 minutes
Genre:  Horror, musical, drama

Winter, 1996:  A company of dancers preparing for an international tour, hole themselves up in an isolated,  abandoned boarding school in the middle of a thick forest.  After three days of productive rehearsal the dancers cut loose with a booze fuelled party, however someone spikes their sangria with LSD.  Soon the existing tensions within the group turn much more sinister, paranoia takes hold, and the dancers are soon trapped in a hallucinatory nightmare.

If you are familiar with enfant terrible Gaspar Noe's previous work: I Stand Alone (1998), Irreversible (2002), Enter the Void (2009) and Love (2015), than you will have an idea of what you are in for with Climax.  Noe tones down his typical sex and violence, although this is still graphic and disturbing.  The film opens with it's end-credit crawl, and has it's opening credit sequence at about the half-way point, there is bravura mobile camera  work, skewed angles (a lot of the film is intentionally shown upside down), point of view shots, odd title cards and weird colours.  Lit in red and shadows, a lot of the latter part of the film is almost incomprehensible.  It features extended dance sequences, which are very well choreographed, and then movies on to dark, intense horror.  While this is mild for Noe, this may be strong for anyone else.