Movie Reviews: "Climax"

A series of audition tapes is depicted, in which choreographer Selva and DJ Daddy interview potential future members of a dance troupe they are creating. They discuss topics like dance, fears, relationships, sex, and drug experiences. One night during the winter season in 1996, in an abandoned school, the collected dancers rehearse an elaborate routine before starting an after-party. They dance and drink sangria made by the troupe manager, Emmanuelle. The diverse group has several personal issues and share gossip about one another during the celebration.

As the party progresses, the dancers get increasingly more agitated and confused and eventually come to the conclusion that the sangria has been spiked with LSD. At first they accuse Emmanuelle since she made the drink, but she points out that she drank it and is also suffering from its effects. Taylor, already resentful towards Omar for dating his sister Gazelle, points out that Omar, a non-drinker, has not touched the sangria and accuses him of being the one responsible. The group gets angry and locks him outside the building in freezing conditions.

Emmanuelle sees her young son, Tito, who is present at the rehearsals, drink the sangria and locks him inside an electrical room to protect him from the agitated dancers. Selva goes to the room of her friend Lou, where Lou confesses that she did not drink because she is pregnant. However, Dom, strongly affected by the drug, enters the room, accuses Lou of spiking the drink and kicks her several times in the stomach; Lou, hurt and in great pain both emotional and physical, passes through an altercation between Alaia and Jennifer, during which Jennifer’s hair is set aflame after Alaia gets physically aggressive due to Jennifer’s refusal to share her cocaine.

A frenzied Lou confronts Dom with a knife on the dance floor, but the group, all heavily affected by the LSD at this point, turns on her and accuses her of having spiked the drink. Suffering an emotional breakdown, Lou ends up beating her own stomach and slices herself superficially with the knife on her face and arm after the group encourages her to kill herself. Emmanuelle, who has lost the key to the electric room in which Tito is locked, recklessly tries to free her son. When the school suddenly loses power, she realises that Tito—who is no longer screaming from the other side of the door—has electrocuted himself.

Ivana brings a heavily hallucinating Selva to Ivana’s room where the two take shelter and have sex. David discovers the two and is kicked out. David tries to enter DJ Daddy’s room but is also evicted. Rejected, David encounters Gazelle as her brother, Taylor, attempts to have sex with her. Gazelle flees from Taylor and stumbles into the central hall where the remaining dancers have truly lost their minds, dancing, writhing on the floor, chanting in tongues, having sex with one another, or beating each other up. Taylor catches up to Gazelle and takes her to his room while David is attacked by another dancer who slams his head against the floor.

When police arrive the next morning, they find a majority of the dancers unconscious. Omar has frozen to death outside while Emmanuelle has killed herself outside the electrical room out of grief. Gazelle wakes up next to Taylor, seemingly having forgotten the evening. A bloody Lou exits the building, and writhes outside in snow laughing uncontrollably. As the police search the building, Psyché, who has several books related to hallucinogens in her bag, and has had an apparent lack of suffering from acid, goes to her room and drops drugs into her eyes.