Distortion is a French short film that follows seven lifelong friends, specifically a young woman named Dianne, who hit it off with a guy named Jef, who arranges for them to party at the abandoned convent where he works as a night watchman. When Dianne awakens from a euphoric haze of the rave, things aren’t quite right. Everything spins out of control, and Dianne must find a way to survive her wide-awake nightmare.

But Dianne doesn’t realize she’s been used as a pawn in a mind-control game by Jef, who takes on a Jigsaw-like persona by drugging every person at the party to see how long it would take for childhood friends to murder each other. And when Dianne finally comes-to, it is too late.

The idea that Dianne’s experience was only a drug-induced hallucination at first seemed like a similar alternative to the whole film being just a dream. However, the fact that these horrific events stem from reality–from the cinematic realism portrayed in the acting and dialogue, to yet another creep who drugs unsuspecting people at a party–makes it all the more terrifying. We are constantly confronted with twist after twist. It’s like a dream, but this time, we aren’t allowed to wake up from this distorted actuality.

And since art imitates life, Distortion is a surrealistic reflection of real events, those which unassuming people fall victim to when perverse individuals attempt to take advantage of them, hinted at throughout the entire film through dialogue and power struggles before we even see the culprit. Our protagonist is female, and this film admirably ignores the binary construct that women are the only victims of unconscious assault, as all the members of the party–male or female–suffered at the hands of two sick, sad men who spend too much time on the dark web. Literally.

Though the entire cast succeeds at delivering realistic performances usually only seen in Lars Von Trier’s work (they talk the way real people talk, for once), Tania Kalume plays Dianne with a empathic gravitas that connects us with our protagonist quickly enough to be heartbroken at the end of a 20-minute film. This realism makes the juxtaposition of Dianne’s living nightmare even more jarring and suspenseful, if not traumatizing. Director Grégory Papinutto has noted that the makeup effects in Distortion were an homage to the traditional process of horror cinema. I’ve already spoiled enough in this article, so I’ll just say this: Phantom of the Opera on bath salts.

Watch a new 15 minute cut of the film here.

DISTORTION TRAILER from Grégory PAPINUTTO on Vimeo.