Nathan (Hugo Dillon) anchors “Pandemonium” (2024), a French anthology horror movie set in the afterlife. After a car crash, Nathan is in denial that he is dead, but once he accepts his predicament, he refuses to go to hell and tries to finagle his way through heaven’s gates. His efforts prove futile, and his introduction to hell gives him the ability to see how a few other souls landed there. It is not long before he faces the first step in his series of punishments.
“Pandemonium” features perfect performances and memorable visuals, but the actual overall stories are predictable even without exposure to a plot summary. It was obvious that Nathan died so there was no narrative tension. Even with a ninety-five-minute runtime, the film could have been shorter. Strong on atmosphere, the three stories’ styles differ dramatically even though the film has a single writer and director, Quarxx (Arter), who is a French multimedia artist up to his fourth feature length film. Nathan’s story has the most location and tone shifts. Starting realistically on a winding mountain road, Nathan wakes up in the middle of the road with his overturned car not far away. Even looking inside and glimpsing his dead body does not deter him from having hope. When confronted with supernatural condemnation, Nathan is full of justification, outraged at others’ shortcomings and full of grievances. Quarxx symbolizes Nathan’s growing realization of his circumstance with the changing weather, which was a brilliant choice. Nathan’s story felt more existential in a Jean-Paul Sartre vein with existential dread over his existence, identity and fate. As his body gets colder, so do the surrounding weather conditions. He is not big on empathy when he meets others experiencing the same situation by either rushing them into facing judgment or riding their coattails to get into heaven.
Once in hell, “Pandemonium” becomes a nightmarish realization of the nursery rhyme, “Ring Around the Rosie,” specifically the line, “ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” People are lying on the ground covered in ashes, and Nathan falls to his knees before a young girl, Nina (Manon Maindivide). By touching her, he can see into her mind, which is a blend of grandiose imagination, Gothic style terror in a contemporary setting and a video recording of an interview with Nina and an offscreen professional about her psychopathic desires. It is unclear what is real or not. Best case scenario: Nina has a vivid, demented interior life. Worst case scenario: she is a pint-size annihilator who could fit into an Eli Roth movie. This story is the one that most adheres to traditional horror albeit in an oneiric, liminal fashion.
Shaken and gasping after seeing into the mind of a mini-mad girl, he crosses to a covered mother, Julia (Ophelia Kolb), and her teen daughter, Chloe (Sidwell Weber). This segment is hyper-realistic in a sleek, contemporary setting with two locations: a high school and their home. This section has two timelines: the past from Chloe’s perspective and the present from her mother’s perspective. Facing unrelenting bullying, Chloe asks for Julia’s help, but Julia minimizes Chloe’s complaint then later regrets the consequences of her actions. Like Nathan, Julia understands the situation but takes increasingly extreme measures to alter the inevitable. This story was the most poignant and was more like a parent’s “Afterschool Special” episode with horror notes. There is a single moment of tension, which though predictable, helped adhere the story to the genre and showed the lengths that Julia would go to evade the inescapable denouement.
Each story in “Pandemonium” features child death, which to some may seem edgy, but is the least one can do in a horror movie to avoid accusations of punking out. If there was one problematic element, it was Julia’s predicament. Trust a French film to have a regressive moment as a refuge for escaped, convicted pedophiles and horror over the real victims of the #MeToo movement, the perpetrators. Julia’s bullies are brunettes or have darker skin while the fair haired and skinned Julia is the innocent called Princess. Of course, it is possible that a conventionally beautiful teenager would not be popular and beloved, but a pariah. The choice feels more like a deliberate aesthetic decision considering not a single bully shares her physical traits or even has lighter shades of brown hair. Also while girls are vicious and can get physical, girls prefer psychological warfare over physical torture.
“Pandemonium” ends on an ambitious, unexpected note, which could be polarizing for some. The sudden left turn into a conventional horror trope was unpredictable, more stylized, still popular and less realistic than what came before. Because Quarxx paired the demented with images of quotidian innocence, it worked, and it has a sense of bureaucracy mishap humor like “The Office” in an underworld setting. It leaves room for a sequel if Quarxx wanted to explore this universe further.
Thematically the characters of “Pandemonium” could be an improvised family made in hell with Nathan as the father, Julia as the mother and Nina as their spiritual love child even though none of the three interacts as a group or knew each other with only Nathan as the link. Otherwise, the locale and death tie the stories together. It felt as if Quarxx was referencing “The Shining” (1980) from the overhead mountainous opening, a man wandering a hazy maze of people as opposed to shrubbery and the appearance of an imaginary character, Tony the Monster (Carl Laforet), who resembles the Elephant Man or those incestuous brothers from “The X-Files.” The denouement adheres to sadistic French Extreme horror and aesthetically resembles “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974).
“Pandemonium” is a bleak movie with most people winding up in hell even if their slip up seems minor. There is no redemption, and even though characters use the sign of the cross and reference Christ, it feels like a world without Christianity and uses Hindu tenets to flash out the rules of the afterlife. There are some nods to Dante’s “Inferno” with circles to hell, but there are no flames. A horned figure prose dumps about the process, but it does not feel as if it is applicable to the prone residents, only Nathan. This mythology is not exactly fleshed out or cohesive, but it does not ruin the overall flow of the narrative.
If it was not for the philosophical elements and production quality, “Pandemonium” would feel like a feature length pilot for a horror anthology television series like “Tales from the Darkside,” “The Outer Limits,” “Masters of Horror” or “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” Even though he only appears foe a short time, Arben Bajraktaraj plays a fellow dead man, Daniel, and felt like a perfect foil for Nathan. Once they were no longer paired, the movie began to lose its momentum and spark. Sure Daniel primarily functioned as an orienting figure, but his challenge of Nathan and ability to surprise himself made him the least predictable character.
Quarxx is a superb visual artist, but maybe needs a little help in crafting stories so seasoned movie viewers will not be able to anticipate his plot twists. “Pandemonium” is horror for people more interested in philosophy who can appreciate veneer-deep, shocking scenarios.
