Climax

Climax

(2018)

Sofia Boutella stars in Gaspar Noé’s (Irreversible) street-dance-horror-hybrid, which won the Directors Fortnight Prize at Cannes.... More

"Climax is reportedly based on the true story of a 1990s dance group whose post-rehearsal party descended into hell, helped by liberal serves of LSD-laced alcohol (it also features an astonishing choreographed sequence set to ’90s electro dance music)." (Sydney Film Festival)Hide
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Climax

Disco Inferno

BY fairbrother superstar

Climax is a horror movie - but calling it that is reductive and misleading because it is quite unlike any horror movie you've seen before. For a start, it's also a bangin' hot dance flick, packed with head-nodding beats and breath-taking moves. Yes, you read that right. Moreover, there are no ghosts, monsters, or marauding slashers here. No, the horror of Climax (despite being set in the mid-90s) mirrors the horror of living in 2018, where reality has become so fragmented and blurred as to be... More incomprehensible. The on-screen text declaring it "a French film and proud of it" is an ironic middle-finger to Europe's rising tide of bigoted nationalism: these French characters are white, black, and Middle Eastern, their much-flaunted sexualities span the rainbow spectrum, and all of them share the ecstasy of free-style dance as transcendent common ground, reveling in contempt for proscribed social codes of "normality". They've spent three days rehearsing their new show in an isolated building and decide to celebrate their final night there with an impromptu party. It's all good fun until someone realizes the communal sangria has been spiked with LSD. Their collective trip quickly becomes a downward, all-night spiral into madness, with everyone lost inside the impenetrable maze of their own minds...

Director Gaspar Noe has made swirling camerawork and sensory overload his personal trademarks, and the way he choreographs his cast and camera maybe show-offy but, hot damn, it WORKS. The conviction with which he indulges himself should be risible - I suppose, objectively, it is - but, whatever else one might say about it, Climax is an undeniably striking cinematic experience. It's absurd and serious; joyful and despairing; empathic and brutally unforgiving. It's exactly the sort of wild ride that keeps cinema vital. Do not, under any circumstances, wait to see it at-home.Hide

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Climax

BY JackWallace superstar

A delirious, electrifying and visceral experience. Beautifully choreographed dance sequences, amazing cinematography, visually dazzling. Best film of NZIFF 2018.

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The Press Reviews

  • Hollywood Reporter

    Noe has made a film that's seductive in its rhythms and bold visualisation of his young dancers' sometimes beautiful, other times brutal somatic expressiveness. Full Review

  • Screen International

    A blazingly original, extremely disturbing film that's something quite new - a psychotropic street dance movie that turns into an orgiastic horror trip. Full Review

  • The Guardian

    Noé is giving us a cinema of sensual outrageousness and excess that makes other films look middleaged and tame. Full Review

  • The Telegraph (UK)

    Plays something like Pasolini's stomach-churning Salò by way of the old Busby Berkeley extravaganza Gold Diggers of 1933. Full Review

  • Variety (USA)

    "Climax" works, at least when it's willing to be a human drama. But then it sinks in that you're watching "Fame" directed by the Marquis de Sade with a Steadicam. Full Review

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  • Toluwani King This is Film.
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  • RexH Looks great. If Dario Argento made a dance movie... !
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