I’m proud of you, Shudder. You did us horror fans right with this one. Bahh gawddd… a continuous one-shot zombie film? I don’t remember seeing many of these one-shot movies, with the last being 1917 starring George MacKay, but it’s obviously very ambitious of the directors and actors and actresses to go for it. How will MadS fare? The story premise for MadS is very simple: a young dude, after snorting some new drug at a friend’s place, is about to pick up his girlfriend to go to a house party. During the drive, a crazed lady who obviously looks like she just escaped from an institution for the mentally insane pops out of nowhere, and now our young friend is driving her to a hospital. From there, everything starts to unravel.

I honestly had no idea this would turn into a zombie-type movie. The movie title didn’t exactly convey what it would be about. I incorrectly guessed that this would be one of those movies where the protagonist questions everything that he sees due to the drugs. You know, the kind where you question if the mysterious lady he encounters is real or just his hallucination. But alas, no, the lady is definitely there, and we are talking about zombies or some version of them.

The movie is “divided” into three sections. In the first, we follow Romain, our drugged-out young friend. For the second, we follow his supposed girlfriend, Anais. Finally, in the third, we follow her BFF, Julia. I can only assume that many watchers will say that Anais’s part was the most awesome of the three. Romain’s part was very slow going once we got past the mysterious lady arc in the beginning. He basically wanders around the house party aimlessly and gets frustrated, wondering what is happening to him. I believe some of his part could have been cut shorter and instead used on either Anais’s or Julia’s time on screen. With Anais’s part, it finally gets going as the virus consumes her while leaving only a very faint trace of her mind intact. Seeing her wander around the streets at night skipping and acting all types of mixed emotions was maddening fun. Finally, with Julia, we see her descent into complete madness after having failed to save her friend and to understand what is happening around her.

I really liked MadS, especially as it’s a Shudder original. If the movie really, and I mean really, really was shot continuously with no cuts, that’s seriously an impressive feat. I’ve seen one-shot music videos, but a full feature-length movie? That’s crazy. Because of that, I Googled to see if 1917 truly was a one-shot movie. Alas, it doesn’t seem like it. It was more like 30+ shots stitched together, with some being as long as eight minutes. One Cut of the Dead was absolutely brilliant and one of my favorite horror-comedy movies ever, but I remember it was in sections and not exactly 100% one-shot all the way through. Either way, MadS is a really fun zombie movie, and whether it’s one-shot or not doesn’t really matter that much to me other than thinking of it as an impressive directing and acting feat.

Big thanks to u/OnceReturned for suggesting this movie on Reddit!