David Moreau's MadS

Each week, Drew creates a watchlist with film recommendations provided by you, the tnmn community.

Last week’s category: mockumentary movies. The watchlists are posted to our website and Letterboxd account every week.

This week’s category: dark comedies. Reply to this email with your submission and why we should watch it. We’ll feature it in next week’s newsletter and the community will vote their favorites. Vote winners are automatically entered into an annual lottery for a super cool, tnmn-exclusive mystery prize. More submissions and wins increases your odds to win.¹

¹ If your submission doesn't comply with the category, I will get, like, really into breakfast foods. And I won’t just be a “breakfast for dinner” person — I’ll obsess. It’s all I’ll think about. Every meal I prepare will be indistinguishable from breakfast. I’ll refuse to buy groceries unless they can be used to create a breakfast-style meal. Occasionally I’ll dabble in something more adventurous, like shakshuka. But after this admittedly light experimentation, I’ll become convinced that traditional American breakfasts are the only real breakfast foods. I’ll become an insufferable champion of the traditional American breakfast. The way families gather around a plate of hotcakes with a pad of butter melting over the stack. Those who make eye contact with me will be treated to a discussion of how traditional American breakfasts aren’t the same as they used to be.

Then, I’ll start accumulating breakfast merch. A corduroy hat with a picture of buttered toast on it. Some crewneck sweaters that say things like “Buttermilk, please” or “Scrambled, not stirred” on them. Vans adorned all over with little illustrations of sunny side up eggs.

My family will tire of my breakfast-forward antics and my partner will ask me to go on a walkabout to rediscover myself. I’ll agree, pack my bags, and leave.

I’ll turn up in your town and decide to choose breakfast foods over my family. It will be a dark time for me. You’ll know I’m there because my breakfast graffiti art will become synonymous with lunch- and dinner-oriented establishments. I’ll leave thought-provoking works on their walls, like an illustration of a piece of bacon tearfully watching a family eat pork tenderloin by the waning light of a candle.

I’ll be lonely. And my loneliness will leave me susceptible to conspiracy theory. I’ll soon become obsessed with an underground entity called The Breakfast Over (Easy) Collective (BOEC) — an organization that I believe is trying to eliminate American breakfast food once and for all.

In an effort to prevent them from succeeding, I’ll start hoarding breakfast foods — beginning with the most prized breakfast food in American history — the everything bagel. And so, your local bagel shop will never have everything bagels in stock. You’ll never taste an everything bagel, ever again. So, ya know. Please follow the category.

A spoiler-free description of the movie.

A teenager tries a new drug and the night takes a surreal turn.

If you like these things, then you’ll like the film.

→ Technical prowess. This film is shot in one continuous take. The shaky, one-take camera adds palpable tension to every scene.

→ When the art doesn’t feel too layered.² This is probably an unfair take — but I’m not sure MadS has a meaning underneath the story. It was just like, a good, well-executed horror film.

→ Linda from the first Evil Dead. Parts of this film reminded me of Betsy Baker’s unsettling performance as Linda in Sam Raimi’s debut feature.

² I googled “things with a lot of layers” – the results of which I under-examined to a criminal extent.

I landed on a site called WordReference, on a page called Things with Layers 1. This page claims the following things have layers: bricks, cake, clothes, DVD, Earth, geology, wall, graphics, parfait, hair, soil, jacket, make-up, lasagna, drapes, onion, pizza, puff pastry, trifle, sandwich, skin, tiramisu, glacier, painting, hail, bedsheets, atmosphere.

Some of these entries are worth litigating. Like, jacket is a layer, but do all jackets have layers? I don’t think so. But totally have no interest in wasting your highly-valuable time, so let’s move on.

WordReference is, it appears, a website where you can create lists of words in a category of your choosing. I created an account to post a list of words, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. So instead, I kindly request you enjoy these two themed lists.

Words to use instead of sock: hosiery, stocking, hose, legwear, foot covering, anklet, crew sock, knee-high, thigh-high, bootie, slipper sock, no-show, tabi, dress sock, athletic sock, socc, soccus, udones, piloi, footwrap, pinson, vamp, puttee, gaiter, half-hose.

I’d like to start using foot covering instead of sock in everyday life. I’d like us all to join up and do it. Let’s see how the world responds. Why are they called socks, anyways? Join the movement.

Types of pasta: Spaghetti, Penne, Fettuccine, Linguine, Rigatoni, Macaroni, Fusilli, Farfalle, Lasagna, Ravioli, Tortellini, Orzo, Capellini, Ziti, Orecchiette, Rotini, Cannelloni, Manicotti, Bucatini, Ditalini, Pappardelle, Gnocchi, Cavatappi, Acini di Pepe, Tagliatelle.

The types of pasta list felt comforting for obvious reasons. I think I’m done here.

What I liked about it.

Sometimes, movies just take you for a ride. There doesn’t always need to be rich subtext or a well-disguised motif underneath it all. Like, can’t you just look at a screen and drool for an hour and a half?

This is a very unfair way to start my recommendation for David Moreau's MadS — but I’ve already typed it out and, as always, I refuse to press the backspace key.

MadS is a film made to mesmerize. It was shot in a single, hour-and-a-half take — just like a previous tnmn headliner, Victoria.

Writer-director Moreau’s story is genuinely unpredictable. There’s a certain vagueness to the threat in the film that makes it creepier because it isn’t known.

Not quite like Jaws — because the scary thing is shown onscreen often enough. But I admire the film's refusal to define what the bad thing actually is.

Make no mistake — the camerawork is the main event in MadS. There’s a natural tension added to the film since it all carries out in a real-time, single take.

Cinematographer Philip Lozano’s camera often trails just behind characters, only allowing you to see about as much as they can. By obscuring the view, much of the horror is less about what you see and more about what you might see. What might be lurking around the corner, or just outside the frame.

Every so often, he flips the camera to face a character, most notably in a scene in which one of the characters takes a long bike ride to get help — one of the most visually stunning, harrowing scenes in the film.

Scenes like this are elevated by tactile performances from a cast of relatively unknown performers. The whole cast does a great job with fairly straightforward source material — but the standout is Laurie Pavy, who plays Anais in the film.

Her performance is so physically articulate and deeply unsettling — it stays with you for at least several days after the credits roll (I’m on day 8). I’d expect to see her in more and more films in the next few years.

So look. I know I’ve cast myself as your mildly (or more than mildly) pretentious movie writer. But sometimes it’s nice to just watch something well-made, without having to worry about if I’m “getting it” or not. Or what it all means.

It would be wild if it turns out I misread this film and it had some incredibly sharp social commentary. But I don’t think this is the case.

Please feel free to reply after you’ve watched the film and tell me about how deep the text actually was. How it was eloquent and understated and literary in how it dissected modern French politics and the state of individualism in today’s society.

I’d quite like that. Thank you!

Enjoy the film.

A fact or two about the production that makes you say “oh, neat.”

→ The writer-director was inspired to make MadS after a nightmare and a chance run-in with an AMC zombie. During his nightmare, Moreau was drugged and experienced a bad trip. Following the nightmare, in his words: “[While I was running], I realized it was raining, and I saw a zombie in the middle of the forest…Then I heard "Cut," and [found out] they were shooting the American zombie show, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol.”

→ The cinematographer underwent weeks of intensive strength and cardio training to film MadS in a single take. Physically holding a 25 pound camera rig for an hour and a half is hard. Cinematographer Philip Lozano had to train specifically for this job.

One great line of dialogue from the film.

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