Climax - Trigger Warning: EVERYTHING

Up until now, I had never seen anything by French filmmaker Gaspar Noe, but I always got the impression that he was arthouse cinema’s resident edgelord. After all, we’re talking about a guy whose major breakthrough featured a ten-minute long rape scene done in a single take, and used this image as a movie poster. He fits comfortably in the same camp as filmmakers like Lars Von Trier and Michael Hanake, in that he’s extremely technically proficient, eerily fixated on making his audience as uncomfortable as humanly possible, but also tends to disappear up his own ass. With all that knowledge in hand, I thought I was prepared for whatever he’d throw at me with Climax. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it sure as hell wasn’t this.

The story is quite simple. A dance troupe has locked themselves in a remote boarding school for a weekend rehearsal. The cast of dozens include the troupe’s cheery star (Sofia Boutella), her oversexed on-again-off-again boyfriend (Romain Guillermic), a pair of siblings (Giselle Palmer and Taylor Kastle), one of whom is a little too overprotective of the other, and their shrewd manager (Claude Gajan Maull), who brought her eight-year-old son with her. At first it looks like it’s going to be a fun weekend of music, dancing and hooking up, but things take a turn for the worse when someone spikes their sangria with LSD. Over the course of the night, the party turns into a Caligulan cavalcade of blood, sex, humiliation, paranoia and destruction.

I’ve seen plenty of films that set out to be unpleasant, and in that department, Climax ranks pretty high. It’s hinted that this was a group of people who have some deep-seeded issues, but just needed that little push for their true nature to come through. While this isn’t a very bloody affair, it’s as hard to sit through and hard to look away from as even the goriest of slashers. It starts off fairly lighthearted, with the dance troupe rehearsing a tightly choreographed number that would bring a tear to Busby Berkley’s eye, and everyone decides to celebrate by letting their hair down, unaware of the nightmare that awaits them. But it isn’t long before the movie pivots from Step Up to Lord of the Flies.

Some movies that deal with characters on psychedelics will try to bring their hallucinations to life you can feel like you’re tripping along with them. Not so here. This is the cinematic equivalent of being the only sober person at a party full of relapsed addicts. And considering that most of the crew aren’t professional actors (Sofia Boutella is the only one in the bunch with acting experience), they do an excellent job of conveying the feeling of being on a bad trip. It especially gets ugly when the acid kicks in and everyone tries to figure out who spiked the punch. The first suspect is a dancer who didn’t drink because he’s Muslim. He’s thrown out into the cold and locked out. The second suspect is someone who didn’t drink because she’s pregnant. You don’t want to know what happens to her. And those are just the tamest transgressions this movie commits. If I were to write a list of trigger warnings, it would probably be longer than the actual review.

One thing that can’t be disputed about Gaspar Noe, though, is his proficiency behind the camera. Noe is to the long take what John Popper is to harmonica solos. After all, this is a guy whose most infamous contribution was an unbroken 10-minute take. At first, I was thinking of making a tally of how many cuts were in this movie, since the opening scene is an uninterrupted dance sequence, only to dash the idea when the next scene jumped back and forth between characters talking to each other. But even if I did, the amount would still be in the double digits, especially since the bulk of the action is done in one unbroken 45-minute long take. (Although I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of there being some Birdman trickery in there. I highly encourage any editors to check this out to see if that’s the case.) The continuous use of long takes only adds to the anxious atmosphere, especially during an extended sequence where the camera is flipped upside down as it glides luridly across a hazy orgy of mind-searing sights and sounds.

Bottom line, Climax is an anxiety inducing nightmare of a film that’s impossible to look away from, no matter how much you might want to. Half of you who read this review are probably thinking “Hell no” and will refuse to touch this movie with a 39 ½ foot pole. The other half are probably thinking “Hell yeah” and will want to get this into your eyes, ears and God knows what other orifices as fast as you can. Either way, just know what you’re getting yourself into.

8/10