SEAT AT THE BACK: FRIGHTFEST - 2018: 'CLIMAX' // "This is not cinema. This is a weapon."

CLIMAX

// Contains *SPOILERS* in the spiked punch . .
WATCH BEFORE READING!! //

A wild delirious ride through a throbbing, locked in, landscape

A dance studio more like an abattoir's decor for an audition

Isolation and claustrophobia in a room too ready for sacrifice

Contorted shapes and silhouettes of dancers deranged

Spiked cocktails take the young crowd into violent disorder

Lycra clad bodies twist and weave beautifully into tainted hate

Illicit sex, pack violence, self-harm on the dance floor

(You better not lose control - DJ)

CLIMAX @ FRIGHTFEST opened with dancer's auditions being watched by Noé

In his room a VHS tape pile includes SUSPIRIA and POSSESSION

One of the dancers has a grudge and is about to create chaos

End credits appear at the start and opened up in the middle

It's more like being in a club or a gig than sitting in a cinema

Soundtrack Includes:
Aphex Twin: "Windolicker"
Soft Cell: "Tainted Love/ Where Did Our Love Go" (Extended)
Gary Numan: "Trois Gymnopedies (First Movement)"
Dopplereffekt: "Superior Race & Technic 1200"
Giorgio Moroder: "Utopia - Me Giorgio"

The Rolling Stones: "Angie" - to come down slowly & horribly!

Dialogue is mainly improvised and violence is extreme

Actions are captured on a camcorder that spins and upends

And stays upside down

Disorientation is absolute

Some walkouts ensue

One watcher next to me covers their face with a coat when the little boy trapped in a room on a really bad trip starts to scream and beat at the door

Authentically upsetting and horrifying

Sofia Boutella as Selva was captivating, endearing, tough, but Noé's camera switches loyalty along the way - always focusing on those most at risk

The dancers were lithe with effortless eroticism and oozing kink - never to be forgotten

You wonder whether - had full sex ensued, or actual harm begun - Noé's camera would have stopped running

You wonder - whether actual harm or sex had begun

You think - was Noé disappointed that some of the dancers DIDN'T go far enough?

The soundtrack took the place of plot and progression

Noé didn't want a film that went through the traditional movie making process - with difficult contracts to be signed and the same old auditions to be held

Most of those auditioning were dancers, not actors

The auditions became the film

The bloody crawl through snow at the start of the film wasn't planned

The sudden fall of snow looked so good that Noé asked a dancer to go outside and start crawling

The primary colour-lit corridors - were like the witch's warrens in Argento's SUSPIRIA on a really bad trip: the dance of chaos turned up too loud

(One of the VHS tapes being shown that Noé still owns . .)

The SUSPIRIA remake could be more like this

But the wicked witch spiked the punch

Gore effects limited, but a slow bleeding cut arm and face stunned - how did Noé do that?

Sex unexpectedly restrained but sexuality still oozed in pores

(She should have used the bathroom!)

First half, as panic sets in, more terrifying than the comedown

This is how it ought to feel and as the room slips towards sleep

This is not a fault

Waking up feels almost guilty: "we didn't do anything" - did we

Did - we?

This is a cinematic masterpiece in identification with terror and chaos

An antidote to LOVE

This is not cinema - this is a weapon.

Welcome to the room GASPAR

And come back to us soon

Credit to the FRIGHTFEST team for getting you here

The BFI "preview" this film in two weeks time

GASPAR chose HORROR to take the trip first

I couldn't stop grinning when I left the screening - spiked out by cinema

I was grinning so much when I walked past Noé that he did a double take - and smiled back

Satisfied customer

Sometimes there are no words needed

Just the pulse and thud of the baseness within us all

Exposed by this man

As we sit strapped to our seats

Beneath a cinema screen

One last thing

But in the middle section I swear I spotted a forbidden image and maybe a clue to the identity of who spiked the drink

Spoiler free moment

I won't say who did it

And if you saw it too - don't you dare!

This is not cinema.

This is a weapon.

XAMILC .

XAMILC . .

XAMILC . . .

C L I M X

BONUS THOUGHTS ON: "SEX - IN CLIMAX"

"SEX" in CLIMAX was more of an audience threat for the director and enfant terrible to do the expected thing. Rather like Argento himself of late, Noé smashes expectations in the face and did what I kind of hoped he would do: take us up way too high. And then - what I didn't expect - he dragged us right back down, before things went too far. Or any further. Than they already had - which was very far. The comedown wasn't pleasant - a terrifying vortex of sound and piss and puke and blood and perversion (and a little boy screaming for his mother - oh . . my . . god!).

By the end - I think we all needed a group hug. I was thrillingly disorientated throughout and weaving fingers around other fingers (hopefully my own "other fingers") and quite worried for my sanity as I stepped outside into the nightmare night tripping of Leicester Square.

Expectation was intense but the film had less actual sex in it than maybe (from the director of LOVE - a cinematic cumshot) it was expected to have, but this was still a viewing experience more extreme in idea and threat than anything more explicitly shown at this year's FRIGHTFEST. The fact it didn't kick off into that expected Orgy From Hell was kind of a masterstroke from Noé I thought, and a proper kick to convention . . Almost a coming down from deviant anticipation - like the aftersting from a slapping hand that exposes the watcher as much as it does the participant. We really had partaken of Noé's spiked punch!

STUFF WE'D PUT ON THE POSTER:

Stuck in a car crash of a place with people you would rather avoid but are forced into watching disintegrate quickly and violently in front of you as the music gets turned up too loud - THIS IS CINEMA YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF!

You don't 'watch' CLIMAX - YOU'RE IN IT!

Getting off your head in CLIMAX is the easy bit. Wait until you see what happens on the way back down.