Acid is the most memorable horror film you’ll see this year, here’s why

After The clouda French horror film unlike any other, director Just Philippot pushes the fear factor even further by inserting it into the images the most atrocious end of the world that OR.

When the terror of horror cinema and the anguish of ecoanxiety meet us to take your guts, what emerges is one of the best films of the year.

Acid, what is it?

Selma, 15 years old, grows up between her two separated parents, Michal and Élise. Devastating acid rain clouds fall on France. In a world that will soon collapse, this divided family must unite to face this climate catastrophe and try to escape it.

The end of the world, in reality, is annoying

Going to see Aciddon’t expect yet another film in which the Earth is invaded by creatures that we can always kill, destroyed by hurricanes that we see coming from afar, engulfed by a tsunami from which we can escape into a desert.

Thereby, Acid it is not a “sub-film about the American disaster”, the budget and special effects less, our dear Guillaume Canet more. This is a completely new cinematic proposal, fun and depressingA Ultra-realistic genre film set in a small town in Northern France which presupposes what all American blockbusters water down: in reality, the end of the world is difficult.

Director Just Philippot throws away the stereotypical figure of the banal daron that he turns out to be a strategic genius Tom Cruise style War of the Worldsor the boy who ends up saving humanity through the strength of his mother’s love for him. Acid takes on the radicality of its ultrarealistic prejudice… and that’s why its protagonists are more or less unbearable.

The best part of all this is thisThey have very good reasons to beWhy the end of the world, it’s painful : must Get organized while death lurks around every corner, come to an agreement. We cannot afford to argue, to stop when we he is hungry, tired or just extremely lazy. When the person you love dies in atrocious suffering, you have to move on, otherwise, we will miss the bus which will allow us to survive, perhaps, for a few more hours.

The beauty of desperation

Nihilistic, depressingBut incredibly shinyIt’s Just Philippot’s film full of deadpan humor and cheekiness. It is as absurd and hopeless as capitalism’s obstinacy to continue to consume excessively, to plunder and to make profits despite the climate emergency.

However, the director does not indulge in cynicism. He doesn’t like torturing them. On the contrary, there is a large beauty in the energy of their desperation. We are disturbed, moved, we identify with their way of moving forward go straight to go nowheretake a few extra minutes only to be consumed by acid an hour later.

Horror and ecology have in common that they force humility

The most interesting thing is that this meeting between fantastic cinema and the most total prosaity not only are they funny, but they act like it a revealer of power relations between genders and ages.

The film forces the characters to be extremely humble. Michal is a hot-blooded rebel unionist. At the beginning of the film we learn that he does not hesitate to use his physical strength to fight a deadly system. He also left his wife for another. He is normally a character volunteer, who believes he is master of his own destiny.

Furthermore, the feeling of ecoanxiety completely escapes him. When her fifteen-year-old daughter confides her concerns to him at the beginning of the film, he almost laughs in her face. He cannot conceive of being helpless. Throughout the film, he will continue to believe that his determination, his intelligence – and somewhere, his selfishness, will allow him to save himself.

The only opinion that matters, Kalindi’s, on Acide

This week Kalindi was almost fine. But that was before seeing Acid, the splendid film by Just Philippot, which left him in trouble for the next 70 years (if we are lucky enough to live that long!).