Horror Movie Review: Pandemonium (2023)

Writer and director Quarxx takes a freeform look at hell and what suffering can look like from a metaphysical point of view with Pandemonium. A French horror film that is an anthology of sorts but told in disconnected fashion. It looks great, has interesting stories that deal with heavy topics, and a very strong cast across the board, but the lack of cohesion between the stories makes it a challenging watch from a complete film perspective.

It begins with Nathan (Hugo Dillon) and Daniel (Arben Bajraktaraj) meeting on a quiet and cold mountain road. They are both dead, having been involved in a car/bike accident and this appears to be limbo. The film doesn’t hang around revealing the uncomfortable truth to the characters and us, the viewers, and the back and forth between them is very entertaining, downright amusing in places. Nathan effectively goes through the five stages of grief in record time and Daniel takes it all in his stride, in an almost nihilistic way.

Until it’s time to move on with the gates to Hell beckoning.

This is where the film reveals that it is an anthology, with stories that are connected via overarching themes of death, despair, and suffering.

In whiplash fashion, the film then thrusts us into the first story, one that resembles a fairytale, but a very dark and bloody one. Starring Manon Maindivide as Nina, a young girl who wakes up one morning in her lavish mansion to find her parents dead. So naturally, she just gets on with things, making her own breakfast, teasing her younger sibling, and messing about like a kid would. It quickly becomes apparent that she might bear some responsibility for their death, or maybe it was her playmate Tony the Monster (Carl Laforet), a deformed creature that Nina manipulates to do her biding. It is an excellent story, with a staggeringly good cast, and how it links into the overall hellish picture does make it more potent, even if the tone shift is jarring.

Speaking of jarring tone shifts though, the next story is quite different and a downright difficult watch. Dealing with trauma and grief that comes from a loved one having committed suicide. In the case of Julia (Ophelia Kolb), her teenage daughter killing herself over school bullying is too much for her mind to handle, and it broke. Now she goes about her day pretending that her daughter is still alive, even though she knows deep down, that she is not.

It is depressingly real, and the most effective story of the bunch.

There’s one more story, and it links back to the character of Nathan as we see just what Hell has in store for him. No spoilers, but it is extremely bloody and again, at odds with what has been seen so far, but that’s Pandemonium for you. Senseless, mind-bending, and soul-destroying horror. It is a very creative film, especially from a visual perspective, but what stops it being a great film is the disjointed anthology-based story-telling that makes almost everything feel standalone.

That is a shame, but what it offers regardless, is impressive and it will certainly hold the attention of most looking for a fresh interpretation of what happens once death arrives.