Acide

After LA NUEE and a short movie also called ACIDE, this French film maker offers the best hopes for the future. I only hope that he won't proceed in stupid comedies. When it was released in movie theaters, I counfounded it with LE REGNE ANIMAL, another French film also more or less in the same kind of stories. Ecological, science fiction.... A genre exploitation French film, but with a big budget. Yes, this director is a good chance for the movie industry to AT LAST offer the audiences something really solid. I only regret the last minutes. I guessed something else. More dramatic, more tragic. His short film ACIDE, back in 2018, was really downbeat, depressing. This longer version should have been the same. Period.

Acide (2023) Review Rating: 9/10

Just Philippot's *Acide* is a visually stunning French thriller about a family surviving lethal acid rains. While the plot wobbles, its technical brilliance overshadows flaws. Olivier Boonjing's cinematography is jaw-dropping: toxic fog, neon chaos, and harrowing close-ups immerse you. Guillaume Canet and Laetitia Dosch deliver perfect, career-defining performances, balancing desperation and tenderness. François-Eudes Chanfrault's score amplifies dread with minimalist drones and haunting piano motifs. The story's ambiguity might frustrate, but *Acide* favors visceral emotion over closure. A sensory triumph where artistry eclipses narrative hiccups. Unforgettable.

The premise of acid-rain and climate collapse was potentially interesting and thus why I watched it in the first place. But the cinematography and effects were confusing, I couldn't tell when or where's it was safe to go. So that ends up being disappointing. But the worst are the characters and their "development". You get a very hazy backstory, a sick girlfriend, and hostile divorced parents with a teenage daughter who lives up to the stereotypical obnoxious teenage girl role. Her father has this nefarious past, one of many storylines that go nowhere. It's hard to say if she even likes her parents. They have no real heart-to-heart talks because they're running for safety. I get that -except - the daughter makes no attempts because ALL SHE DOES is scream non-stop for either mama or papa...mostly because she thinks she knows everything and ignores their attempts to keep her safe.. and then she starts screaming for them again.

This could have been an interesting climate-change horror story, instead it becomes a story of people we don't get to know...except that they are stuck with an unlikeable teenager who, I suspect, none of us end up rooting for.

I really liked the first act of the movie with an interesting set up and dynamics but unfortunately, the movie falls apart due to poor writing and uninteresting characters. "Acid" is the type of movie where it contains an interesting concept about environmental disasters but unfortunately fails to fulfill it's potential because of the messy writing where concepts are all over the place, certain amounts of logic that really doesn't make any sense and characters that are not interesting and honestly, REALLY unlikeable.

The camerawork, the sound designs and the color presentations are pretty good. The performances from the cast members are solid as they have some decent moments of emotions. Including some solid special effects and make up used. But the negative components really overshadow the movie. Disaster movies like this I can watch just for fun popcorn but the unlikable characters, plot holes, and the messy writing makes it difficult to really believe much of this movie.

No pun intended - the movie is a bit slow paced, but still has quite the impact. I had no idea this was based on a short movie (I probably would have watched it prior if I had known) ... just saw this on the site here. I assume the general idea was taken and expanded - more time to tell the story. But maybe it works or rather worked, better in the shorter format.

Acting is fine, the effects are good and the movie does look good. Not sure about the ending myself, but things have to end one way or another - overall the movie does not seem to get too much love here - but it is more than decent of course. Just be aware that this demands patience from you the viewer.