PLOT: A medical resident (Mara Taquin) starting an ER rotation under an impossibly strict doctor (Karin Viard) notices a pattern among some young visitors to the ER. They present with horrible skin rashes and uncontrollable bleeding, followed by psychotic rampages, which inevitably end in their suicides and the deaths of anyone unlucky enough to be around them. Soon, she notices that she, too, has begun to develop a similar rash and the same uncontrolled bleeding.
REVIEW: Body horror’s comeback continues with Sanguine, or, as it’s translated into English, Species. Given the fact that there’s already a horror classic with the latter title, it seems likely Sanguine will be the title everyone uses once this gruesome, clever, and often darkly comedic horror film comes stateside. It comes from director Marion Le Corroller, who makes an impressive debut with this shocker, which continues body horror’s resurgence, mostly under the watch of a fresh new generation of female directors including Julia Ducournau (Raw and Titane), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), and Emilie Blichfeldt (The Ugly Stepsister).
The film starts out with a whopper of an opening scene, where a harried young employee at a burger restaurant snaps when an annoying influencer holds up his line, beating the man to death before brutally taking his own life. It’s only the start of this nifty horror romp, following Mara Taquin’s Margot as she somehow becomes infected with the same condition she saw in the ER, but that her colleagues refuse to believe actually exists. The film offers sly commentary on the pressures faced by ambitious young employees trying to get ahead, with each victim working in a high-stress job, such as a stockbroker, a freelance journalist, or, of course, a medical resident.
Le Corroller’s film is slick and stylish, with a sharp visual style similar to The Substance’s, featuring bold colors and bright cinematography that never for a second hides the gory, pus-filled scabs that start to take over Margot’s body. The body horror stuff is definitely ramped up, with Margot at one point burning scabs off her body, peeling them off in an agonizingly clinical way, the camera never shies away from. And that’s only the beginning, with some novel set pieces, including what might be the first on-screen birth filmed from the inside of the birth canal. It also has a pounding electronic score by ROB, who also scored Fargeat’s Revenge and is a frequent collaborator of Alexandre Aja’s.
Yet, it’s not all just flash. Sanguine tells a compelling story, with Taquin’s Margot easy to invest in. She’s presented as a good, kind person, and you want her to come out alright, even if the genre makes that outcome unlikely. Recent body horror seems to be skewing toward a darkly comedic mode, but Sanguine is more like a Cronenberg movie: at its heart, it’s a tragedy.
The supporting cast is also strong, with Viard convincing as a hard-as-nails supervising doctor with little to no compassion for her residents, while Sami Outalbali has a nice turn as a fellow resident with a crush on our heroine, who is recovering from his own breakdown but doesn’t realize how the mental side of her problem is far from the worst of it. Kim Higelin also makes an impression as Margot’s adversary-turned-friend in the program, who, like Outalbali’s character, also has a crush on Margot — because that’s one of the side effects of the condition. It allows its sufferers to, for a while anyway, become irresistible and infallible, only for it to later come at a terrible cost.
Sanguine — or Species if they don’t change the English name — should become a horror breakout if it gets a good distributor (Shudder should for sure chase this one). It’s a promising debut for Le Corroller and a great addition to the rapidly expanding body horror canon. Keep ’em coming!
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