Pandemonium. It can mean a few things. It’s a situation that causes confusion, it can be a wild uproar. It can also refer to the capital of Hell, as seen in Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, and it’s this last meaning that’ll we mostly be focusing on as we look Arrow’s new offering, the latest movie from French director Quarxx, who also brought us A Perfect Blue Sky and All the Gods in the Sky.
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Pandemonium is a story of three parts. It’s actually, secretly, an anthology in disguise! The framing device follows the descent into hell of Nathan (Hugo Dillon), who has just been involved in a car crash where both he and biker Daniel (Arben Bajraktaraj) were killed. Rather than a “traditional” hell of fire, brimstone and eternal torment applied by pointy-tailed demons with pitchforks, the hell Nathan experiences is one of sadness, cold, desolation and loneliness as he encounters souls trapped forever in the torment that ended their lives. This is where we find our other stories.
The second story is that of Nina (Manon Maindivide) and Tony the Monster (Carl Laforêt). Nina is a precocious little child, smart, confident, and utterly psychopathic, trapped forever living out the terrible things that she did to her parents and her sibling. The third and final story focuses on the sad tale of Julia (Ophélia Kolb) and her daughter Chloe (Sidwell Weber). Julia is a busy mother; too busy to listen to the concerns of her daughter who is being bullied at her new school. When things end in tragedy, Julia has to deal with the repercussions of her unthinking neglect of her daughter. The film than circles back to tie up the story of Nathan, which ends in a way that I doubt anyone watching will have expected. It’s unexpected, but doesn’t feel cheap or unearned.
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The performances on display here are all great to watch, and special mention has to be given to the precocious Nina and her monstrous companion Tony, who effortlessly steal the show both with their performances and with a story that is a deeply uncomfortable watch that doesn’t shy away from not only showing you everything, but lingering on it far longer than you might want them to. There’s limited use of VFX, almost everything being done practically, including the depiction of hell, Tony’s makeup and more. One of the special features, ‘Tony the Monster’, talks to the make-up/FX supervisor Olivier Afonso who goes through just what was involved in the construction of the prosthetics.
Speaking of special features, there’s not a huge amount of them, but they’re almost all interesting and worth checking out. There’s ‘Different Textures’ where the director talks about the film, ‘Filming a Real Birth’ which confirms that, yes, that was an actual birth scene you see in the latter half of the film and talks about just how difficult filming something like that is. There’s a making-of which mostly focuses on the hell sections and shows what cast and crew went through, some footage from the film’s premiere in Paris, and the film’s trailer as well. It’s a short, sweet little collection of features that add a nice bit of context and depth to the production. This special edition also features a reversible sleeve with some very pretty artwork, a poster and a collector’s book featuring new writing by Anton Bitel.
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Pandemonium isn’t a film for everyone. The anthology format is a turn-off for a lot of horror fans and the film is more introspective and disturbing than it is horrible. It’s a macabre look at what happens after death, and how bad decisions can haunt us not only for life, but forever after as well, and we think you should take the time to follow Nathan along on his descent into Pandemonium.
Pandemonium is out on Limited Edition Blu-ray on 27th May from Arrow Video.
