I find that the brutal and garish style of Gasper Noe has little appeal and I have thus far only watched some excerpts and a couple of early shorts. Understanding that this might have a greater appeal, I gave it a watch. The confrontational beginning with unappealing youths was not a promising start and though the subsequent dance routines were impressive I couldn't help feeling that combined with the thunderous 90s dance music accompaniment this was my idea of hell. An hour later into this plotless extravaganza, those same 'dance' routines are replayed as death throes in an, admittedly very well filmed, modern version of Dante's Inferno. There is considerable directorial skill here but clearly I am not part of the intended audience. My only pleasurable moment, ironically, was when the police arrive to poke about the dead bodies and we have an instrumental version of the Rolling Stones, Angie. A moment of bliss amidst a mass of agonised death wish.

Every now and then I watch a movie that makes me not want to watch movies for a while and this is one of those movies. I wanted to try and see a Gaspar Noe movie but I don't think I'll bother anymore. He is clearly trying so hard to shock the audience and make everyone hate the movie to such a degree that I don't see a point in indulging in his twisted fantasies that have no ultimate payoff. The film is just mindless violence and stupid shock value with terrible characters,plot and sub-par acting.Noe might say he draws inspiration from Kubrick but he's just an art-house version of Eli Roth. The craftsmanship of some shots and some good cinematography are the only reasons why the movie gets two stars even though the last fifteen minutes are shot upside down which made me want to pick up my TV and throw it out the window to make sure that it never has to endure another of Noe's films.

A French dance troupe's party is wrecked when someone spikes their sangria with LSD.

This is a really well-made film. The visual style will be really familiar to anyone who's seen a Gaspar Noé film. Lots of long long long takes and bright colours and twirling, tumbling cameras.

There are two group dance sequences in this film. They are both utterly phenomenal ... the best thing that this film has to offer,

Noé seems to have never taken LSD, or really know much of anything about it.

I don't find this film to be shocking. Noé kind of lacks the courage of his convictions here. There's a lot of hypothetically shocking stuff in this film, but most of it happens off screen. The last part of this film is mostly people writhing and screaming.

This got old for me pretty fast. About the third time we were following someone down the long green hallway while people screamed in the background, I suspected that there wasn't really going to be any point to this.

I was right. At best, this is a really trite version of "Irreversible".

It's still well-made with a phenomenal soundtrack.