Thibault Emin’s stifling, claustrophobic Franco-Belgian virus movie throws us right back into the all-too-recent maelstrom of Covid lockdowns, capturing that strange sense of isolation and bewildered frustration that became a way of life for so many people for the better (or worse) part of two years.
But Emin’s virus is no typical insidious airborne contagion transmitted via close contact; instead it’s something unknowably terrifying – an epidemic of ‘metamorphism’ transmitted by gaze that causes the infected to literally blend in with their surroundings, the organic slowly morphing into the inorganic. In one striking sequence – one of the few outdoor scenes in the film – a homeless man becomes fused with the pavement that has become his home until the essence of his humanity is extinguished entirely.
Our guides through this existential madness are Anx (Matthieu Sampeur) and Cass (Edith Proust), thrown together in the former’s cramped apartment (where the majority of what we might call ‘the action’ takes place) following what’s clearly been a clumsy one-night stand. She’s wild and freewheeling, he’s rather more intense and increasingly disturbed by outside world reports of this strange new epidemic that’s redefining the meaning of human existence. As the baleful effects of the virus inveigle their way into their isolation – one sequence involving a transmutation into living rock is genuinely quite hair-raising (and as close as the film gets to exciting) – Anx finds himself communicating with other residents in the apartment block via ventilation shafts and heating vents. When the virus starts to merge Cass with her bedsheets, the underlying themes of pure body horror start reaching entirely new levels.
Else certainly isn’t for everyone – its descent in the last act into obscure black-and-white photography and increasingly surreal animated imagery depicting the transformation of the human form into something else might be a step too far into the wilfully weird – but it’s a haunting, effecting and entirely disorientating experience that offers a typically European and far less sensationalist depiction of a lethal virus than the rather more typically gung ho Hollywood studio efforts.
ELSE is released digitally in the UK on March 3rd.
