One night filmed in one continuous terrifying shot. On his way back home, a young man encounters an escaped patient who alters the course of his life. A film by David Moreau, starring Lucille Guillaume, Laurie Pavy, Milton Riche, Yovel Lewkowski, Sasha Rudakova, and Vincent Pasdermadjian.

While driving home after buying drugs from his usual dealer (Vincent Pasdermadjian), Romain (Milton Riche) accidentally drops cigarette ash on the driver’s seat. He panics, knowing his father would be furious if he discovered any damage to the Mustang. Quickly, he pulls the car over to the side of the road to assess the situation.

Just as Romain feels relief at finding no visible damage to the seat, he’s startled when a strange woman (Sasha Rudakova), seemingly delirious, suddenly opens the passenger door and climbs in. The woman has bandages wrapped around her head and all her fingertips. She appears terrified but she does not speak. She reaches over to twist the car key in the ignition — clearly wanting him to drive away as quickly as possible.

Romain calls emergency services to report finding a distressed woman by the roadside. However, when they inform him they will send both an ambulance and police to his location, he quickly hangs up, realizing he’s under the influence of drugs and doesn’t want to risk getting caught. Instead, he decides to drop her off at the local hospital.

During the drive, the woman plays a sound clip from a digital voice recorder. Romain listens, confused, as a clinical voice discusses “Subject C39” – a female between 20 and 25 years old, nationality unknown. The recording continues, detailing disturbing “safety measures”: the extraction of teeth, removal of tongue and salivary glands. Finally, it mentions that the subject has been injected with retrovirus-infected blood.

Suddenly, the woman begins violently smashing her head against the seat. Before a horrified Romain can stop her, she reaches into the glove compartment, grabs a screwdriver, and repeatedly stabs herself in the neck until she collapses. Just as Romain tries to process this shocking scene, the seemingly dead woman springs back to life, lunging for his neck. Though she has no teeth, she manages to cover him in her blood before finally going still.

Not knowing what to do, Romain drives to his garage and leaves the woman’s body in the car while he cleans himself in the bathroom. When he returns, however, the body has mysteriously vanished. Frustrated and confused, he searches the house for any sign of her, wondering if he’s been trapped in some kind of nightmare.

His girlfriend Anais (Laurie Pavy) arrives at the house, followed shortly by their friends, who blast music and honk their horns, trying to convince Romain to join them for a party. Though he initially refuses, they persist. When a neighbor threatens to call his father about the disturbance, Romain reluctantly agrees to go.

Soon after, Romain begins showing symptoms — it becomes clear he’s been infected with the virus from the strange woman. Unaware of his condition, he unknowingly transmits it to both Anais and her best friend Julia (Lucille Guillaume), with whom he’s having an affair.

Written and directed by French filmmaker David Moreau, MADS is an impressive horror film shot in a single continuous take across its 85-minute runtime. The premise offers a fresh take on well-worn zombie tropes, presenting them in a realistic, grounded way that feels relevant to modern society.

While the three main actors — Lucille Guillaume, Laurie Pavy, and Milton Riche — deliver solid performances, the pacing drags in several scenes, failing to maintain its intriguing momentum throughout.

The mysterious virus takes an unusual approach to zombie infection. Rather than killing and reanimating its victims or erasing their memories, it causes the infected to gradually lose their moral inhibitions, acting increasingly on pure impulse while remaining partially aware of their actions.

This innovative approach eliminates the need for traditional zombie prosthetics and makeup. However, it comes with a drawback: the infected aren’t particularly frightening in appearance. Instead, they simply resemble people in the grip of violent psychosis, unable to control their actions.

MADS premiered at the Fantastic Fest on 21 September 2024. The film was released on Shudder on 18 October.