Director: Gaspar Noé
Writer: Gaspar Noé
Stars: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub
French dancers gather in a remote, empty school building to rehearse on a wintry night. The all-night celebration morphs into a hallucinatory nightmare when they learn their sangria is laced with LSD.
“Infernal.”
Plot
A series of audition tapes is depicted, in which
choreographer Selva and DJ Daddy interview potential future members of a dance
troupe they are creating. They discuss topics like dance, fears, relationships,
sex, and drug experiences. One night during the winter season in 1996,
in an abandoned school, the collected dancers rehearse an elaborate routine
before starting an after-party. They dance and drink sangria made by the
troupe manager, Emmanuelle. The diverse group has several personal issues and
share gossip about one another during the celebration.
As the party progresses, the dancers get increasingly
agitated and confused and eventually come to the conclusion that the sangria
has been spiked with LSD. At first, they accuse Emmanuelle since she made
the drink, but she points out that she drank it and is also suffering from its
effects. Taylor, already resentful towards Omar for dating his sister Gazelle,
points out that Omar, a non-drinker, has not touched the sangria and accuses
him of being the one responsible. The group gets angry and locks him outside
the building in freezing conditions.
Emmanuelle sees her young son, Tito, who is present at the
rehearsals, drink the sangria and locks him inside an electrical room to
protect him from the agitated dancers. Selva goes to the room of her friend
Lou, where Lou confesses that she did not drink because she is pregnant.
However, Dom, strongly affected by the drug, enters the room, accuses Lou of
spiking the drink and kicks her several times in the stomach; Lou, hurt and in
great pain both emotional and physical, passes through an altercation between
Alaia and Jennifer, during which Jennifer's hair is set aflame after Alaia gets
physically aggressive due to Jennifer's refusal to share her cocaine.
A frenzied Lou confronts Dom with a knife on the dance floor,
but the group, all heavily affected by the LSD at this point, turns on her and
accuses her of having spiked the drink. Suffering an emotional breakdown, Lou
ends up beating her own stomach and slices herself superficially with the knife
on her face and arm after the group encourages her to kill herself. Emmanuelle,
who has lost the key to the electric room in which Tito is locked, recklessly
tries to free her son. When the school suddenly loses power, she realises that
Tito—who is no longer screaming from the other side of the door—has
electrocuted himself.
Ivana brings a heavily hallucinating Selva to Ivana's room
where the two take shelter and have sex. David discovers the two and is kicked
out. David tries to enter DJ Daddy's room but is also evicted. Rejected, David
encounters Gazelle as her brother, Taylor, attempts to have sex with her.
Gazelle flees from Taylor and stumbles into the central hall where the
remaining dancers have truly lost their minds, dancing, writhing on the floor,
chanting in tongues, having sex with one another, or beating each other up.
Taylor catches up to Gazelle and takes her to his room while David is attacked
by another dancer who slams his head against the floor.
When police arrive the next morning, they find a majority of the dancers unconscious. Omar has frozen to death outside while Emmanuelle has killed herself outside the electrical room out of grief. Gazelle wakes up next to Taylor, seemingly having forgotten the evening. A bloody Lou exits the building, and writhes outside in snow laughing uncontrollably. As the police search the building, Psyché, who has several books related to hallucinogens in her bag, and has had an apparent lack of suffering from acid, goes to her room and drops drugs into her eyes
Owen Gleiberman
Variety
A.O. Scott
The NYTimes
David Fear
Rolling Stone
Helen O'Hara
Empire