Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 23: MadS (2024)

MadS is a French outbreak/zombie movies whose biggest selling point is it was shot in one take and is presented in real time.

Now, having seen the movie, I find it really, really hard to believe that's true, but the director, David Moreau, insists it is absolutely true. He says it took five days to get it right, and the film that we see is what was shot on the fifth and final day. If that's the case, then it really is one of the most impressive feats of filmmaking I've ever seen, and I definitely want a behind the scenes making of documentary!

I would say, even if he's fibbing a little, it is constructed very well, so that there are no moments that could clearly be edit points, and it does really feel like a real time, single cut movie, with all the tension and anxiety that brings. (I'd also like to commend the camera contraption they used, because for something shot handheld, the camera work is steadier than many conventional movies these days.)

As for the plot, there's nothing particularly groundbreaking about that: a rich teenager buys some drugs before a party, and on the way home, a woman covered in bandages gets into his car. She infects him with some kind of contagion that turns people feral, and the film follows that contagion as it passes along. There are several locations in the town, and various means of transportation, so this isn't a single take movie all shot in one place, and thinking about the logistics of that just makes me head hurt. But probably not as much as the infected teens in the story.

MadS is currently streaming on Shudder.