Midnights have become an unusual program at Cannes, especially as genre titles have broken free from the containment of the late-night program and popped in places like Un Certain Regard (“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”), Cannes Premieres (“Victorian Psycho”), Out of Competition (“Her Private Hell“), and even Competition (“Hope”). What’s left for the actual Midnight Screenings program? The answer is not much. While Jane Schoenbrun and Na Hong-Jin’s films earned their buzz on the Croisette, there wasn’t much chatter about the actual midnight films, in part because many were seen as disappointing. Zachary Lee will hit three of them here soon, but I have two to anchor this dispatch, and I can’t recommend either.
Yeon Sang-ho’s “Train to Busan” was a bolt of lightning to the genre, a fantastically conceived and executed zombie movie that hummed with the promise of a bold career to follow. The sequel, “Peninsula,” was a bit of a letdown, but featured some great set pieces and reasonably strong ambition. What is there to say really about his 2026 offering, “Colony,” which is already setting the box office on fire in South Korea but only infuriated this genre fan with its aggressively derivative approach and frustrating geography? “Colony” should have been a bloody escape from a Cannes dominated by long chamber pieces, but it was honestly one of the hardest movies to get through this year once I realized it was never going to come together.
Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) is a biotechnology professor without a job after a controversial exit. She’s invited to a conference by her ex-husband in the hope it could lead to new employment, but something much more terrifying than a job interview happens. A disgraced scientist named Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) shows up with a syringe full of deadly stuff, stabbing the head of the biotech company leading the event.
Before you know it, the exec looks like a “Bone Temple” reject, and he starts biting/turning the people around him. It turns out that Young-cheol is not only immune, he can communicate with the hive mind of creatures about to wreak havoc. Sang-ho’s one interesting idea is a zombie hive mind wherein the villains of the piece can communicate and learn from one another, although “The Last of Us” kinda did that first.
There’s a whole ton of “kinda did that first” in “Colony,” including nods to George A. Romero and the entire “Resident Evil” franchise. Not every zombie movie needs to rewrite the manual, but if you’re not going to be original than you need to be well-executed, and Sang-ho can’t keep a consistent choreography to a film set largely in a Korean skyscraper. On the macro level, it’s never clear enough where our survivors are and where they’re going; on a micro level, the action values chaos over coherency. Maybe Sang-ho needed the confined space of a train to really hit his mark. Let’s get him back on board one soon.
Maria Martinez Bayona’s “The End of It” could have been in Midnights, but it’s actually in Cannes Premiere instead, probably because it’s intended more of a conversation starter about aging and mortality than a straightforward sci-fi/horror piece. It’s a film with so many good ideas that go almost nowhere, becoming an increasingly dispiriting exercise in lack of follow-through. This “Black Mirror”-esque riff starts with so much potential, and its undefeated leading lady sustains that promise for longer than lesser performers could have, but just doesn’t ultimately have much to say. A decent performance, strong production design, and sharp ending can’t stop the feeling that this is an idea in search of a movie.
Rebecca Hall plays Clare, who is about to celebrate her 250th birthday in this vision of the future that looks a lot like our own. When she breaks a rib, it’s replaced, and she’s informed that it was her last original bone. The impending birthday, general malaise, and the sense that she’s not really there any more lead Clare to a controversial decision: She’s going to end it. Husband Diego (Gael Garcia Bernal) doesn’t understand and cyborg assistant Sarah (Beanie Feldstein) seems equally confused. 180-year-old daughter Martha (Noomi Rapace) returns to say goodbye, bringing potential android babies for practice given she now hopes that her offspring could take Clare’s spot in the eternal roster—it’s a one out, one in kinda thing. It does lead to the movie’s funniest beat: When Claire throws a synthetic baby that’s annoying her out a window.
Bayona takes a cool, cynical approach to everything that happens in “The End of It,” an aesthetic enhanced by sparse production design. It’s a clinical way to tell this story that puts a window around it that keeps any sort of emotional engagement at bay. What does it mean to die after 250 years? What would it mean for a world of perfect synthetic people to live that long? Does Clare’s decision have an impact on others who have fought mortality?
“The End of It” meanders to an admittedly startling ending, but it steadfastly refuses to truly engage with so many of its ideas. It’s a script that feels like so many beginnings, but too little approaching an end.
Finally, there’s the abrasive, repulsive “Roma Elastica,” director Bertrand Mandico’s hollow provocation about the relative worthlessness of the film industry. Early in the film, Marion Cotillard’s aging actress Eddie hears a story from her assistant Valentina (Noémie Merlant) about a time that she was at a fancy party and took such a massive shit that she couldn’t flush it, forcing her to walk around with it in her purse. While telling this story, Valentina is biting into a chocolate ice cream bar, often in close-up. That’s about as deep as “Roma Elastica” gets, another shock-fest with so little to say that it becomes a chore just to endure.
Eddie has a new job on a cheap sci-fi film in Rome, but she’s distracted by the cancer diagnosis just received at home. “Roma Elastica” rarely aims at emotion or realism. For example, the turd-in-a-purse story is told on a plane in which half the seats are occupied by marble statues. Why? You got me. And when Eddie and Valentina get to Rome, Mandico gets to unleash his inner Fellini, playing with satire that verges into early John Waters gross-out territory, although that makes it sound more fun than it actually is.
Franco Nero pops in for an admittedly great cameo, saying things about how aging stars can only stay young by making movies, and maybe that’s the point of it all? Mandico just wants to be silly, and he convinced two multi-talented actresses to play with him on a deliberately ridiculous project.
“Roma Elastica” is more a series of short films tied loosely together by the film production narrative. In one, Eddie guest stars on a talk show with cardboard cutouts in the audience and a man in ape mask who spouts vulgarities. In another, a face comes out of the back of her head as “Me and My Shadow” plays on the soundtrack.
Taken individually, these shorts might have been inspired standalone experiences. Assembled into a feature, they’re a chore.