Alpha review: This outlandish horror about an Aids-like epidemic is a ‘disorientating, maddening whirlwind’

After winning the Palme d’Or for the shocking Titane, out-there French director Julia Ducournau is back at Cannes with another nightmarishly weird film – but it’s an unsatisfying watch.

One of the most anticipated titles at this year’s Cannes Film Festival was Alpha, written and directed by Julia Ducournau. Her last film, the magnificently bonkers Titane, won the Palme d’Or in 2021, so the news that she was returning to Cannes with another fizzing cocktail of icky body horror and traumatic family relationships had festival-goers excited –  if nervous – to see what nightmarish weirdness Ducournau had in store.

It turns out that there is nightmarish weirdness aplenty. A disorientating, maddening whirlwind of haunting sights, thunderous music and fiercely intense performances, Alpha confirms that Ducournau is a visionary artist. But once you’ve recovered from the brain-bashing experience of watching her latest film, it comes to seem a lot less satisfying and stimulating than Titane was.

Alpha gets its title from its heroine (Mélissa Boros), a 13-year-old girl who lives in an unnamed French town with her single mother (Golshifteh Farahani). She isn’t especially rebellious, but one night she comes home from a party with a large capital letter A carved into her arm by a needle the size of a chopstick. Her mother, a doctor, is understandably upset, especially as the amateurish tattoo might have given Alpha a mysterious virus that turns people to stone. As the months pass, patches of their skin harden, they cough clouds of dust, and eventually they atrophy into cadavers made of polished, cracked, creamy white marble. It’s a creepy death, but also a strangely beautiful one: in effect, the deceased are transformed into their own gleaming, cathedral-worthy memorial statues.

While the doctor diligently looks after patients with this virus in her spookily understaffed hospital, Alpha’s tattoo won’t stop gushing blood, an embarrassing affliction that prompts her classmates to shun her. (This is presented as a despicable example of prejudice, but, really, don’t the children have a point?) But the doctor doesn’t just have her daughter and her patients to worry about. One person who definitely has the virus is her estranged brother Amin (Tahar Rahim), a mischievous and charismatic drug addict.