The headline is deceiving. MadS isn’t just one of the best horror movies of the year. It’s one of the best movies of 2024 period. David Moreau‘s film is about as visceral as they get, following a unique zombie outbreak unfold in one ferocious take.
The single take is one of the reasons why MadS is startlingly effective, but not the reason. Once the outbreak of the virus begins, we witness young lives fall apart on the night of what’s supposed to be a party… Catch the metaphor? It’s especially present in a maniacal yet deeply human performance from actor Laurie Pavy, whose transformation is both exhilarating and tragic.
It’s a helluva experience, as well as performance, that Moreau recently spoke with Immersive Media about.
This is a real one shot movie. No stitching together takes. You shot over fight nights, so how’d night one go?
My producer Yohan and I, we really wanted this movie to have a heart and soul. When I saw Victoria, it is a great movie and a one take movie that takes place in Berlin. Not a genre movie, but it almost like a documentary. I thought that for horror, to make a one take, it will bring that much of the realism.
I’m still watching a lot of genre movie because I’m a big fan, but sometimes, it lacks realism for me. I knew that if we make it for real, it’ll bring those moments that you don’t expect, where it’s long and real. I really wanted to do it for real.
Where’d the process begin?
When we started the process of making this movie, basically we had one week of rehearsal or rehearsal with the crew before I rehearsed with the actors on set. But we had one week of rehearsal with the crew. So, at the beginning, I was using my iPhone with the DOP. We said, “Okay, we want to shoot this way, this way. The actors need to make that choreography and all that.”
And when we tried the Friday before the week of shooting, we did a full technical rehearsing. It was a disaster. All of the crew came to me and said, “David, are you sure you don’t want to cut just one or two times? We’re never going to make it.” And I said, “No, we need to make that happen.” I was self-confident in the fact that we can make that all together. I never thought that it was impossible, even if it thought that we were crazy.
And so, we shot on Monday. The first day, it was a disaster. Tuesday was a disaster. And on Wednesday, we had the movie from the beginning to the end.
How’d it feel at the end?
When we achieved that, man, it was like a soccer team winning the World Cup. We were so happy together. The movie was far from being perfect, but we made that happen all together. And on Thursday, it was a better take. And on Friday, it’s the movie you saw.
Before all the digital stuff came into the movie, we were showing the dailies with the crew in a movie theater. So, the crew can see actually what they are doing, working all together on the same thing. We can call it a piece of art, product of whatever, but everybody sees what they are doing all together.
We did that on this movie because we were all staying in the same hotel. We saw the movie from the beginning to the end altogether, to say, “Okay, this works, this doesn’t work, this doesn’t work, this doesn’t work.”
And then?
And then everybody speaks out loud and says, “I have a problem.” Okay, if you have a problem with that, we can do it. There’s this book from how Pixar about making their movies, where they all took part in the creative process. And so, it was really like that. It was really appreciable to really do a movie with a crew. I think it’s, for me, the best experience with a crew.
Why’s that?
We are all together and focused on the same goal. When we saw the movie, I actually put some soundtrack on the movie we just shot the day before, so it was really fresh for everyone. We are never fresh in moviemaking, because from the moment you start to shoot to the first cut, most of the time, it’s three or five months. But this time it was fresh, it was from the day before. So, the crew were so excited by this new way to proceed. The actors, the crew, myself and the producer, it was a lot of teamwork, really.
Night one and two were disasters. What were the disasters and how did you fix them, you and your crew?
It was mainly technical problems. If you look at the movie, I wanted it to be hand-handled but not too much because I don’t want people to be feeling sick after five minutes of the movie. We had this, and I think there is just one of this or two in the world, Belgium steady operator who created a box.
When you put your body cam, the body of your cam, basically, it’s stabbing like the horizon, but not the verticals. So the camera never does that, but it does that. So we had this small red body camera. It was a red raptor. We shot the movie with a 35 millimeters lens, and so, it was not that tiny. All the cables need to be very well put down because we were moving all the time.
The DOP was really filming with some pillow on his stomach to put the camera on. And when we take a car, he needs to jump onto a small car. Then the grip was putting some belts on him. It was really physical for him. So, all of those physical stuff made the cables of the camera to be very neatly put. We had a problem with that first day.
And what went wrong on day two?
The second day we lost the focus puller. Sometimes we were too far from the camera so we lost control. So, basically it was technical problems. And on the third day, it was one of the biggest storms in east France for two years. It rained like crazy.
The cloud was black and we needed to start to shoot at, I think, it was at 9:25 because I wanted 15 minutes of sun, daylight before the darkness. The rain was, we had a flood in the first set. It was a disaster. We took care of it. Then 10 minutes before shooting, the sunrise, like God saying, “Okay guys, you can shoot.” The sky turned from black to blue. We shot, and it was great, but I was scared because the road was really slippery.
It was kind of cool. I would love to live this experience again. I miss it a lot because it was so cool. Really intense.
You wanted naturalism, like you said. When Laurie and Lucille are on the bike and there’s blood all over them, it’s disturbingly beautiful, like a painting. Were there those moments with your cinematographer where, even in the chaos of it all, you recognized beauty in the horror?
Oh, I worked with a DOP that is really technical but also has great sensibility. We knew that the red and the blood will be as effective as a painting. We wanted this to be beautiful. We had a great, great lighting crew. I mean, we could not control the city, but it looks natural. We control what we could, which was of course the interior sets. All of that was lit. We had a great color grading artist to really help us.
But the scene with Lucille and Laurie, I wanted to be really close to them. We could not do that by following them. So they were driving on a traveling car where we put the bikes. We had to jump on the traveling car. Then the traveling car goes and we go with them. I really wanted to be close to her and Laurie. Laurie had blood everywhere, so she used that blood to paint the face of her friend. She was so crazy, Laurie [Laughs]. I mean, when we finished the take, she told me, “Is it good what I did? I don’t remember. I was so into it. I really don’t have a single idea of what I did.” I think that Laurie’s craziness is in the movie. I hope you felt like she was insane. She’s incredible.
She really is. I have many questions about her performance. What did you and Laurie discuss and want to achieve with that role?
Laurie is so special. She’s really smart. When I cast the actors, they got the movie. They got the soul of it. I knew that I wanted… even if they were young actors with little experience, I wanted them to be very free to bring what they wanted to bring in the movie so we could have the joy of printing it on camera. And so, of course, I want to be scared when she starts to feel that she’s losing her mind, losing her own personality.
How’d she transform the way she does? The body language is incredible.
Yeah, she was really insane. The scene where there are the two of them on the motorcycle, she bites Lucille for real. Lucille, she said, “What the fuck did she do? She bit me.” Laurie after the take, she said, “I’m so sorry, Lucille, I didn’t know what happened, but I had to bite you.” She was out of her mind. I love it.
I needed to have actors who will be diving into this; this is why also it brings realism to this movie. The actors are so committed physically. Physically you cannot cheat, but sometimes realness is not real in certain movies. It’s something very, very, very important to me.
A part of the reason that performance is so great is the humanity along with the madness. You feel for her.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We feel sorry for even if you don’t have those basics, because even when you’re writing a movie with real time, you cannot introduce [regular traits]. I mean you can, but I didn’t want to do a regular character introduction. It’s just more simple. Even if it’s more simple, that doesn’t mean that it’s less deep. I wanted this roughness like a documentary. You start to spend a night party with a bunch of kids and it goes in the wrong direction.
After watching this incredibly visceral experience, I did have the thought, what does it all mean? What does this story say to young adults or kids in France? What’s the infection symbolize?
I’m 48 now. My kid, who is in front of me, is eight. But the world we’re living in, when I was 20, the horizon was clearer than it is right now. It’s so tough to hear every day that your world is going to fade. I do think that it will in the next couple of years. I mean, there will be major changes for good or bad, I don’t know. But it will change a lot. I think it’s really a different way to look at the future.
This is what I’m saying to my wife when we are wondering if we want to have a child again. I tell her I prefer my kid to be able to listen to a Mozart concerto, even if it takes place in the world of Terminator with machines and we have to fight against machine and we live underground — but you have the chance to hear a Mozart concerto. I prefer to be alive and to hear Mozart, even if I’m living underground.
Even if you live in darkness, you can always find some light, even if the light is underground. And so, it’s nihilist, but also, I’m really in love with humankind. It’s a mix of all these feelings that I am thinking. It’s really tough. I mean, even for me, it’s tough to look at the future. I don’t know what to think about it. So, I think the movie embraced a little bit, this conception of, okay, this is dark, but we are all together in it. We have to figure it out. And if you figure it all out together, it’s much better than if we were just alone.
MadS is now available to stream on Shudder.
