MadS (2024)

On the morning of his birthday, Romain meets his drug dealer and snorts a bright red powdered substance before climbing into his father's car to drive home. While smoking, he drops a lit cigarette in the upholstery and pulls over to deal with it. A heavily bandaged woman suddenly appears at the roadside and attempts to steal the vehicle; Romain speaks to her calmly and, deciding he is too intoxicated to call the police, offers to take her to a hospital instead. Inside the car the woman plays an audio recording in which a physician explains that she carries an infectious condition and that surgeons have removed her teeth and tongue. The woman then produces a blade and plunges it into her own neck; her blood splashes across Romain, and a smear of it reaches his mouth. Romain, convinced he is experiencing a drug-induced hallucination, drives the woman home and leaves her body slumped in his father's garage. After showering, he begins to twitch uncontrollably; when he returns to the garage the bandaged corpse has vanished.

Later that evening Anaïs, a woman with whom Romain has been sexually involved, arrives at his house and persuades him to go with her to a neighbor's house party. Inside the crowded space, strobe lights and pounding music overstimulate Romain; he retreats to an upstairs bathroom as his physical tics escalate. Anaïs and her friend Julia later come upstairs, and both snort the same red powder. After Anaïs departs back into the party, Romain emerges from the restroom and attempts to have sex with Julia, who is visibly pregnant; Julia rebuffs him and returns to the downstairs crowd. In the dim corridor Romain's eyes begin to reflect light unnaturally. He goes back downstairs, dances briefly, and kisses Anaïs; when she resists, he bites her hard enough to draw blood, and she shoves him away. Agitated, Romain steps out into the street and violently attacks a partygoer, beating the man severely before fleeing on his bicycle.

The alarm on Romain's home starts blaring; while he rides away his father calls and tells him there is someone inside the house, but Romain brushes off the warning. When he returns to the property he notices the heavily bandaged woman in the garage, removing a small tracking device adhered to her chest. She notices him and pursues him up the stairs. As Romain runs into the upper rooms, a paramilitary force in full tactical gear and gas masks smashes through the front door. The soldiers rapidly sweep through the house, pin the bandaged woman to the floor and open fire, shooting her dead. Romain manages to slip out a back exit as the operatives clear the structure.

Romain sprints into the adjoining forest, his laughter growing high and manic as spasms ripple through his body. Soldiers find him amid the trees, shove him into the back of a black van, and drive him away. During the ride they repeatedly fire shots into his torso and head, shooting him numerous times; the vehicle continues down the road with Romain riddled by bullets in the rear.

As the armored van barrels away it nearly collides with Anaïs, who is walking toward a waiting rideshare. When she climbs into the car she begins to experience sudden, violent tics like the ones Romain displayed. The rideshare driver notices vehicles following them and steps out to confront the tail; the approaching paramilitary unit opens fire and kills the driver instantly. Anaïs scrambles back into the passenger seat and tries to flee, but a shot punctures one of the car's tires and the vehicle rolls to a stop. She convulses uncontrollably in the street, then bolts on foot; armed operatives open fire at her repeatedly, bullets striking her body multiple times, but Anaïs remains standing and unimpeded by the wounds.

Anaïs slips into the restroom of a nearby bar and barricades herself in a stall. Moments later the same paramilitary team bursts into the establishment and methodically gun down the other patrons, executing them with automatic fire. Hearing the gunfire, Anaïs climbs out through a window and escapes into the night. She uses a phone to call Julia and arranges to meet on a bridge nearby. As she runs through the city her tics intensify into animalistic screeches; emergency sirens begin to wail. She assaults a passerby in the street and seizes his bicycle, pedaling toward the rendezvous, shrieking and covered in blood.

Julia meets Anaïs on a motorized scooter and helps her onto the back with the goal of taking her to the hospital. During the ride Anaïs repeatedly reaches forward and smears fresh blood across Julia's face and hands; frightened, Julia shoves her off the scooter when a civil defense siren screams overhead and speeds away, promising to return with help. Anaïs remains on the pavement, screaming, as Julia flees toward a phone booth.

Julia receives a frantic phone call from her physically disabled mother, who says that she cannot move and that Julia's sister Alice has abandoned her. Julia turns and races home with urgency. Anaïs notices Julia's direction and pursues her through stairwells and elevators, alternately pleading for assistance and threatening to eat anyone who gets in her way. Julia reaches the lobby of her apartment building just ahead of Anaïs and steps into an elevator; the building suddenly loses power and the elevator stalls between floors. From the dark shaft Julia hears the wet, crunching sounds of Anaïs attacking a neighbor down the hall. Alice, hearing the cries, runs to the elevator door to pry it open and free Julia; as she leans in to help a paramilitary operative standing in the corridor raises his rifle and shoots Alice dead, executing her with a single round.

When the electricity returns, Julia manages to exit the elevator and races up the stairs to her mother's apartment. She finds Anaïs inside the doorway, hunched over and biting into the flesh of Julia's mother, tearing at the woman's face and feeding. Julia screams and charges forward; she is intercepted on the landing by a masked soldier who identifies himself as Noa. Noa tells Julia to be silent and begins a professional sweep of the corridor searching for the infected woman. Anaïs launches herself at Noa's leg in a feral lunge, ripping and clawing; Noa struggles to subdue her, wrestles her to the floor and then fires multiple rounds into Anaïs's head, shooting her repeatedly at point-blank range until she ceases movement.

After the shooting Noa peels back her gas mask and inspects her own leg; she discovers bite marks and immediately realizes she has been exposed to the same contagion. Noa hands her assault rifle to Julia, placing the firearm into the young woman's shaking hands, and then produces a sidearm from her belt. In a single, precise motion Noa raises the pistol to her temple and pulls the trigger, shooting herself dead. Julia holds the rifle against her chest, and for a few breathless seconds she begins to laugh in a high, unhinged tone while explosions and distant gunfire tear through the cityscape behind her. As the sounds of conflict build into a cacophony she drops the rifle and, overwhelmed by the shock and grief, breaks down into hysterical screaming and sobbing.

Earlier in the night, the paramilitary team that first breached Romain's home had captured and shot the heavily bandaged woman when they overran the residence; their gunfire had killed her at the scene. The same unit had later intercepted the rideshare driver who tried to confront them and shot him dead on the curb. In several locations across the city the soldiers execute uninfected civilians and gun down patrons inside the bar; those victims die from automatic weapon fire at the hands of the operatives. Romain is taken by the operatives from the forest and is shot repeatedly inside the transport van by the paramilitary, his body riddled with bullets as they carry him away. When paramilitary members confront Alice in the apartment building hallway they shoot and kill her at close range. Anaïs is struck by gunfire on the street--soldiers fire on her multiple times without effect--but later Noa fires the decisive shots, shooting Anaïs in the head repeatedly until she is motionless. After shooting Anaïs, Noa discovers she has been bitten and kills herself with her sidearm.

As the film closes, Julia cradles the rifle Noa left her and sits slumped against a window overlooking a city torn by explosions, gunfire and burning buildings. She begins to laugh manically and then collapses into uncontrolled sobs and screams. The final frames linger on Julia alone in the smoking room as urban conflagration roars beyond the glass. The narrative contains no explicit explanation of the initial outbreak's origin: the film does not reveal whether the red designer drug, the blood and other bodily fluids, or some other vector spread the condition, and it remains unspecified whether a government laboratory functions as ground zero for the contagion. The last image freezes on Julia's anguished face as credits begin to roll.

At the end of MadS, Julia is the last of the three central characters still moving through the chaos, but she is left alone, surrounded by an infected city, and handed a weapon as the night collapses around her. The ending is bleak: the people closest to her are dead, transformed, or gone, and she ends the film in shock, crying and laughing at once.

Here is the ending in a simple, chronological narrative:

Julia reaches the apartment building while the situation outside is already breaking apart. The power is out, the halls are tense, and the sounds of violence and panic are all around her. Anaïs is no longer a person Julia can safely face; she has fully become part of the horror spreading through the building and the city.

Julia gets into the building and keeps moving upward, trying to survive long enough to reach safety. Outside, the armed commandos are already operating in the streets, treating the infected as a deadly outbreak.

Alice, Julia's sister, tries to help her, but Alice is killed by the paramilitary forces before she can get Julia out. This leaves Julia with no family help and no real escape route.

Julia makes it to her mother's apartment. There, she finds Anaïs consuming her mother in a brutal, physical attack. Julia has to flee again, now seeing that the people she loves are either dead or beyond saving.

She is stopped by a masked commandos member named Noa. Noa tells her to stay quiet and searches for Anaïs, trying to control the situation as if there is still a chance to contain it.

Anaïs attacks Noa and bites her. The commandos member then overpowers Anaïs and shoots her repeatedly in the head. This is the final destruction of Anaïs as a living person in the story.

After realizing she has been bitten, Noa removes her mask, gives Julia her rifle, and kills herself. Julia is left standing there with the weapon, forced to face the ending of the night on her own.

In the final moment, Julia sits or slumps by the window while the city behind her is filled with gunfire, explosions, and collapse. She laughs and then breaks down screaming and crying, alone with the rifle and the full weight of what has happened.

The fate of the main characters at the end is this: - Julia survives the immediate events, but she is left isolated, traumatized, and holding a weapon with no clear protection or guidance. - Anaïs is killed after attacking Noa and being shot in the head. - Romain has already been overtaken by the same infection and is part of the wider collapse that has consumed the night. - Alice is executed by the paramilitary while trying to help Julia. - Noa is bitten, realizes she is infected, and shoots herself. - Julia's mother is found being eaten by Anaïs, so her fate is effectively death in the chaos of the final sequence.

Romain is the film's starting point: a teenager who visits his dealer to try a new drug before going out for the night, and then drives home in his red Mustang convertible. The story shifts into horror when he picks up a bloodied, bandaged woman who crawls into his car, and the chaos that follows begins with that encounter. Sources describe Romain as the first character through whom the film's infection, mania, or outbreak-like spiral takes hold.

Anaïs and Julia are the film's other main protagonists alongside Romain, and the narrative is described as following the three of them in sequence as the night unravels. After Romain's initial spiral, the film "takes turns" carrying the story through Anaïs and Julia as each becomes caught in the escalating violence and panic. Their role is central because the film is built as an interpersonal drama among these three friends, not just a creature- or outbreak-centered horror story.

The woman is the key inciting figure in the opening stretch of the film: she is bloodied, bandaged, and crawls into Romain's car after he picks her up. Sources indicate that this encounter is the point where events "soon spiral downhill," and later descriptions suggest she is tied to the strange contagion, mania, or infected state that spreads through the story. The film keeps the exact cause of her condition deliberately unclear, but her arrival is what launches the film's chain of horror.

The film centers on the relationship between Romain, Anaïs, and Julia, who are presented as friends whose personal dynamics matter as much as the horror around them. One review explicitly calls MadS "an interpersonal drama between three friends," and another describes the story as unfolding through their separate but connected journeys through the same night. That friendship structure matters because the emotional stakes come from watching people who know each other well make increasingly desperate decisions under pressure.

As the film progresses, the strange condition affecting Romain is described as contagious mania or a contaminant that drives infected people into erratic, violent behavior. One source says that each main character encounters someone infected by this contaminant and is drawn into random acts of violence, while another says the city is at risk as the situation spreads from a house party outward. The surrounding people become part of an escalating chain reaction, turning the film into a broader citywide nightmare rather than a single isolated incident.