ATMO HORROX

Pat Tremblay is the Jean-Marie Straub of fantasy film. His movies don’t even try to comfort you, they stand out like abstruse monoliths. You stare at them because you can’t help it. You circle them, touch them, hug them, kick them, push them away, till you give in, simply happy that they’re there. Tremblay’s third feature length film “Atmo HorroX” is, like the two before, more of an experience than a narrative, a generous invitation to leave everything sophisticated behind and allow your head and stomach to be invaded by this mixture of brilliance and dementia. A grotesque figure by the name of Catafuse, with gas balloons in his crotch and a stocking pulled over his head, travels the world and attacks people with two white high heeled shoes, that he (or it) wears on his hands. Everything, absolutely everything about this experience is weird – not in a hip-, but in an existential sense. Gaga, dada and gooba-gobble anyhow. As the American journalist Blair Hoyle so beautifully described it: “It’s undoubtedly one of the strangest, most unique films of the year – if not the decade – and has all the makings of a polarizing piece of cinema. It may seem mildly insulting to suggest using mind-altering substances while watching a movie, but if ever there were a film to view while elevating your senses, it’s Atmo HorroX.”