Presented entirely as one long continuous take, there’s a formal precision and control to director David Moreau’s zombie film, MadS, even as it embodies a relentless and chaotic energy. As bleak as it is brutal, it’s a measured unraveling of society as witnessed through the eyes of three young partygoers, Romain (Milton Richie), his girlfriend, Anais (Laurie Pavy), and his ex, Julia (Lucille Guillaume), who question whether the ensuing carnage is really happening or just a really bad trip, courtesy of their top shelf drugs.
This relay race structure keeps MadS interesting, as it bounces from character to character and renews the dread and anticipation as we see someone new responding to escalating anarchy. By not allowing the audience the respite of a camera cut, Moreau lets us sit with the characters, providing no escape and cultivating a sense of nauseating powerlessness as they process and respond to what’s unfolding in real time.
Moreau had very specific angles to the apocalypse that he wanted to show through each of Romain’s, Anais’, and Julia’s arcs. So, it was a dance between letting the actors have true ownership over their characters while also giving them narrative guide rails to ground them. “I wanted each of my actors to get a clear idea of who their characters were and give them the movie. I told each of them ‘You have this part of the movie for forty minutes. Here’s the script but the rest is yours,’” Moreau shared.
He spoke with Dread Central over Zoom about how he thinks of MadS as three short films spliced into one, how he worked with cinematographer Philip Lozano to create an ambiance of chaotic control, and the backstories of the characters that we didn’t get to see (but very much informed the actors’ performance decisions).
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dread Central: A main selling point of MadS has been that it’s a zombie film told in one long take. I know you wanted to dive into the intensity of what these characters are going through but what made you first think “Zombies and long takes go well together”?
David Moreau: I always thought about this movie as a rollercoaster. You’re caught inside of it and don’t move until the ride stops. I saw this German movie several years ago that I loved called Victoria, which is also a single, continuous take. A lot of things in that movie were planned but there was also a lot that was unplanned; the naturalistic elements of that film gave it a realism that made a fictional story feel like a documentary. I thought it would be interesting to use those techniques for a movie that tells the story of the end of the world.
What you see happening on screen may be true, but it may not be true, and that ambiguity is what I wanted to convey in this structure. This is a different structure to my last films and I enjoyed that challenge and break from convention. I wanted to bring realism into a story that isn’t real … at least not yet. [Laughs]
DC: On that note of realism, I love all three of these main performances because they span the spectrum of how someone can respond to zombie attacks. Romaine brings a “WTF is happening” attitude, Anais just embraces the madness amid her body betraying her, while Julia fights tooth and nail to flee. How did you settle on these three characters to embody your story?
DM: I wanted to take the rhythm of those baton running competitions and have that be the rhythm of MadS. I wanted the chaos to be passed from character to character. The movie isn’t officially split into three acts but structurally, of course, I wanted it to feel that way. The fact that it was a love triangle between these characters was a geometry that I thought would serve the story.
I did write backstory for these characters but I knew going in that a lot of who these people were would be shaped by the actors inhabiting them. I bring 50% but they have to bring 200%. They needed to be in control of this movie also since the film was in one take and that meant we would be in their heads for an extended period, they also needed to bring a sensitivity. Again, like a documentary, I wanted each of my actors to get a clear idea of who their characters were and give them the movie.
I told each of them, “You have this part of the movie for forty minutes. Here’s the script but the rest is yours.” The main directives were to make them relatable, that even as this story goes off the rails, the thing that anchors is these universal emotions. Romain is this guy who’s not an adult, he’s not good or bad, he’s just a thrillseeker who gets in over his head. Then for the two girls, though they may share a connection in that they’re both in love with him, their personalities couldn’t be more different.
DC: Everyone understood the assignment. All of them have to embody a wild interiority and everything felt natural that it was hard to believe a lot of that was scripted. In particular, I want to shout out Laurie. I’ll try to avoid spoilers but the way she committed to the “twitching” and had her very own Possession transformation moment was showstopping.
DM: We shot MadS in five days. For that scene you’re referencing, we did five takes. The last take she did is the one you see in the movie. What’s interesting is that the actor who plays Romaine, Milton, had to go to the hospital after he filmed his final scene for the film. He’s okay now but we had to finish the movie while he was in the hospital and while we were shooting Laurie and Lucille’s scenes we were all worried and hoping he was okay. So for context, that was the backdrop for some of the sequences we were filming.
But for Laurie, who was playing Anais, she was so intense. She told me that after she did that final take, she forgot what she was doing and she was just living in the moment, embodying her character. In that scene where Anais and Julie are on the motorbike and Anais is going crazy, she really did bite poor Lucille, the actress who plays Julia. Both of them went out of their way to make this real. I remember Laurie told me after, “I have no fucking idea what I did but I just did it.” They’re close friends and they tell me how sometimes it’s nice to have scenes where you can forget and just live in a scene.
DC: That’s an interesting way to think about the film, as sort of three forty-minute short films. Shifting over to more of the production elements, how did you and cinematographer Philip Lozano work together to create this sense of control and craziness? I’m tempted to say the film feels found footage-y but it’s too focused in a sense …
DM: It was my first time working with Philip for MadS. I went with the strongest one, not only in terms of technical skill but also physical prowess. Since we were doing these long takes I needed a DP who could hold the camera for 90 minutes. Philip is sensitive and precise with the camera. He processed everything in his head and was very particular about which camera we were going to use to shoot. We found this Steadicam operator in Belgium who invented this kind of box where you can put your camera inside the box and you can move the box as much as you want but the camera stays still.
Filming for him was a physically taxing experience and he was almost always handling it for the most extreme shots, only occasionally passing it back to the grip guy. Like the scene where Milton’s character is leaving his dealer’s house and gets in his car, the film follows his journey home, to capture that Philip was standing on top of a small car following Milton’s car. It looked like a scene in Mad Max: Fury Road. [Laughs]
DC: Thank you for gifting me a peek behind the curtain there. I want to also hone in on Sasha Rudakova’s character, who acts as a catalyst for the craziness of the night. How much of the logistics of the zombie outbreak did you build out in your head? I’m curious if you filmed or were going to film more scenes of her character to showcase the origin of the outbreak.
DM: I’m happy you mentioned Sasha. In my head, she was patient zero, the original guinea pig and the vessel for all the cruel experimentation. The interesting thing about Sasha is that she’s a top model, has an angel face, and is beautiful, but wanted to specifically be in this movie to subvert her public perception. She said “I want to destroy my image. I want to do something interesting.” I told her “Okay, I’ll give her the role.” We had fun building her backstory together.
We settled on something where she’s this woman from Eastern Europe (because Sasha is from the East) and was abducted from the streets and taken into this lab for experimentation. It speaks to how the powerful prey on those without status. Thank you for speaking about Sasha because she put in a lot of work. Especially for this scene in the beginning where she accosts Romain, we rehearsed that a lot. It was a brief but very intense role where she’s moving and transforming into a zombie before our eyes in this car but has to do that gradually. It’s a brave, courageous, and amazing performance.
DC: Looking at the films you’ve made thus far, they’ve all been horror. What draws you to this genre as the medium through which to tell your stories?
DM: I think when you start to write stories, the greatest connection you can have with your audience is when you talk about matters of life and death. If your stories go in this direction, it makes it easy for them to embrace even as it unsettles them. I think audiences can dive more into the story if they know that something really bad will happen. The horror genre is this way we can bring our characters to the darkest places and yet still show human connection and resilience, too.
Watching a genre movie is restful because the world is so violent and brutal and I feel at ease in front of a screen when I’m watching horror because there’s this sense that even if it looks real, it’s not real. You can rest a little bit and know that the violence on-screen is on-screen and I’m protected from that. Interestingly, I think the horror genre is for those who are sensitive.
MadS is available now on Shudder.
Categorized:Interviews
