Movie Review: ACIDE is simple, honest and terrifying

The fame that the post-apocalyptic disaster genre has had in cinema has been very fashionable for a few years. Although they have had very good productions, some stand out for their simplicity and the interestingness of their plots.

Each filmmaker has a point of view of what could happen to humanity if it were attacked and invaded by extraterrestrial beings, deadly viruses that transform people into zombies, punk warriors who fight for territories and power, but others have It has more to do with current situations.

In the past 2023, a film based on a 2018 short film by French director Just Philippot caught the attention of locals and strangers for having a more real story and more attached to what is the reality that we live every day, ACIDE is not entirely original and knows how to handle very well the dramatic and fantasy elements with overtones of horror about what we have to face as humanity in a world in which there is an increasing scarcity of natural resources,

What is the film about?

During an unexpected and aggressive heat wave, strange clouds begin to pour acid rain causing devastation and panic throughout France, in a world on the brink of collapse, a young misfit and her divorced parents must join forces to face and try to survive this. imminent climate catastrophe.

The scoop is good and could already sound very trite, with clichés very typical of the genre that serve to give us an overview of what could be and what could not, of how we can react and face without any knowledge a situation for which we are not prepared. Prepared, something very similar happened with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that is here to stay and now there are variants and mutations of it.

The problem of natural resources has not only been seen in television series, movies, novels, comics, and even podcasts where each one poses a possible situation based on real events of the alterations that the planet is suffering, recently it is said that 81.87% of the Mexican territory suffers from drought, a percentage also shared by other countries.

The problem of water is something that has been worsening in recent years and as humanity it seems that we do not understand that its use must be responsible and rationed, the film in question does not try to raise awareness about this but rather to ask ourselves questions about it and what answers we could Give to each one being the main one. What would we do as humanity if the drinking water was contaminated and we couldn’t drink it?

For the previous question, thousands of answers have to do with technology and media purification, which turns out to be very logical, the main problem is time, designing and changing everything to try to restore an evil that humanity itself has done takes time, one that the planet no longer has, which would be devastating for those large cities and small towns that do not have the resources to carry it out.

Like every film of the genre, it proposes and complies with its own rules, seeing it from the point of view of ordinary people who face a global disaster, something that is already too trite but that could not be told in any other way, although it has elements fantastic these are very much on par with the horror and despair that is experienced when it starts to rain, as spectators we can very easily enter the game of having to guess where things are going, what they propose here is that everything we see gives twists and turns and nothing is as it seems.

From the first moment they present what the characters are like and what their motivations are, we have the divorced father of the protagonist Michal (Guillaume Canet) who is a man who is in the middle of a labor dispute and brutally attacks a containment officer and is recorded. on a cell phone and then make it viral on the internet, we have the ex-wife Élise (Laetitia Dosch) who already has a relationship with another man who seems to not agree with some situations that have to do with her stepdaughter and her ex-husband, we have to the father’s love interest who is hospitalized and about to undergo surgery and finally we have the protagonist Selma (Patience Munchenbach) a young misfit who tries to find answers to her questions and try to overcome her fears and adapt to a life in which His parents have formed new couples, a dysfunctional former family facing an unprecedented catastrophe, a deadly acid rain storm.

We are constantly watching a news program that tells what is happening in other parts of France with rain that is harmless but that is out of time, a lot of emphases is placed on global warming, the environmental pollution that large industries are doing to the planet. , passive/aggressive movements of environmental groups that predict a catastrophe if these companies do not become aware.

All these elements go from being ignored to being protagonists of what we will see later, the chaos becomes present as the rain becomes more constant, it is not necessary to have a powerful storm with lightning and thunder that impresses, it is simply a rain like any other but it is becoming more and more acidic in its components, what begins as a nuisance ends up contaminating and destroying what it touches, leaving puddles in its wake as dangerous as the rainfall that also becomes longer in time.

These elements are what give that touch of horror and despair among those affected while scientists try to explain this strange but lethal phenomenon, try to know what is causing it, and design a strategy to combat it. The problem is the time that It may take them before this spreads to a global scale, the militia for its part tries to help those affected by improvising safe places where neither medical services nor food, much less water, are enough for the entire population. that they try to protect.

These elements together make every minute on screen desperate, its narrative makes us as viewers hooked from the first moment to know what the conclusion of everything will be, which is not what we think and much less hopeful, this game of elements of Putting things on a more real level without taking it to the extreme with impressive special effects is what makes this whole project shine by itself and leaves us with a fear of what may happen in any day to come.

It is interesting how filmmakers like Just Philippot do a lot with very little, the script written by Yacine Badday and Philippot himself does not take unnecessary liberties nor does it fall into comfort zones where it seems that everything happens and resolves itself, the sub Plots help us understand the characters and what leads them to experience extreme situations and make important decisions that help them survive.

If we focus specifically on the directing work, Philippot does a wonderful and very convincing job for a film of this genre with a simple background, he manages to involve us with these characters and with the situation in general in an impressive and, above all, terrifying way in moments of Panic and chaos, the first rain sequence is a true nightmare with no escape with very palpable and realistic tension management.

Each sequence is strategically planned so that everything goes from less to more tension and horror and focuses each time on a different facet of this deadly rain, making it work in the best way, becoming chilling and how the population is transformed. In a monster that only looks out for its protection and interests, the shortage of water mainly and food is at its highest point, there is no longer much water to drink and the wounds and burns are increasingly aggressive and deadly.

At one point they manage to define that what this rain contains is the mixture of different contaminants that make a different, more aggressive, and corrosive sulfuric acid that is activated at its highest point with water, in essence, this project does not offer a different scenario than the typical apocalyptic and survival films that we have already seen but it does give it a very different approach, its own terrifying and sinister personality.

With all the elements that we already have, we evaluate it as a film that can be on another level of entertainment but also has undeniable flaws, for example, there are holes in the script that do not explain how elements are combined to form that new acid in the atmosphere and how it acts with the presence of water, basic chemistry tells us that when concentrated sulfuric acid is mixed with water the solution reaches high temperatures and here we have external elements that we do not know what they are, we also have a sequence in the that the population tries to escape to places away from the clouds and the rain in their cars they avoid helping the affected survivors after all these people are not zombies carrying a deadly virus but burned people who need medical attention, this to accentuate that man is selfish by nature but stated in a very illogical way.

ACIDE as a film is an exciting and effective journey that in its 99 minutes of duration tries to make the most of each of its elements in the most effective way possible and divides it into 3 acts, in the first we meet the characters, in the second We see what happens with this rain and the population and in the third, we see the apparent resolution of everything and the consequences that as humanity we must face, there is no moral discourse as such, they state that to survive we need the help of others and therefore It was a denunciation of the large industries that have polluted the planet for many years, the importance of becoming aware of global warming and the rationed use of water and the few natural resources that the planet has.

The best approach he makes is that there is no technology today that is capable of accurately predicting what the consequences of an event like this would be, nor is there anything that can make all those almost exhausted resources enough for an entire world population. mainly food, here we do not see that nations or the military are so useless, they put this in a real way in which it is not only enough to have good intentions but nothing seems to be enough to help those who need it, because although I said that this It goes from less to more, in the long run, it will be something that affects everyone and there is and will not be anything that will protect us from an imminent and fateful end.

The intensity and desperate tension come more from the problems of a chaotic society than from a dysfunctional former family where we can see in a more raw and real way how quickly the cordial atmosphere between citizens evaporates, trust in others is something that quickly disappears, the changing and convenient loyalties, the scarce and useless technology and the increasingly running out of time maintain a rhythm that does not allow this to fall at any time. The story moves so quickly that we do not have time to think too much In what is going to happen we simply let ourselves be carried away until the end.

The special effects are very simple, it is not necessary to have spectacular CGI for the rain scenes, which some were done in this way but others using practical and manual effects, as for the makeup, the work also falls into the line of the simple but impressively attractive thing that goes from a slight burn to bodies completely corroded by acid, the production design creates an environment that increasingly looks and becomes more sordid and decadent, deserted and isolated places, open fields where there is no safe place to take refuge create a frightening and desolate atmosphere.

The cast is made up of Guillaume Canet, Lætitia Dosch, Patience Munchenbach, Marie Jung, and Martin Verset, who do a very good job with their characters who, being few on screen, have just enough development time.

The music composed by Robin Coudert has what it takes to cause tension with just a few notes, pieces that fit very well with what we see and that follow the same rhythm, being part of everything and not just a compliment.

In conclusion, ACIDE is a film that goes from less to more with an unoriginal proposal that knows how to take advantage of each of its elements, a simple, honest work with a very realistic and cruel vision of what can happen to humanity in the next years.

ACID will be released soon on the Netflix platform.