Overlook 2023 Film Festival – Smoking Causes Coughing is a superhero movie for people who don’t like superhero movies. It’s gory, extremely weird, and slightly philosophical. The French film blatantly riffs on everything from The Avengers, to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” to “The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” all while putting a dark twist on each of them.

Horror fans will recognize writer/director Quentin Dupieux from his schlocky film Rubber about a killer tire. His latest feature follows a team of superheroes known as The Tobacco Force. Each is named after an ingredient in cigarettes. There’s Benzene (Gilles Lellouche), Methanol (Vincent Lacoste), Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier), Mercure (Jean-Pascal Zadi), and Ammoniaque (Oulaya Amamra). In the opening minutes, the team fights a giant tortoise a la “Power Rangers” monsters or old Godzilla films. They slaughter the beast by suffocating it with cigarette smoke until it explodes into buckets of goopy glory. Would we expect anything less from the director of Rubber and Wrong Cops?

From there, the team is sent on a retreat to work on their group dynamics by their leader/mentor Chef Didier, voiced by Alain Chabat. The character, a talking rat, and oddly a ladies’ man, constantly drools green ooze from his mouth that may or may not be poisonous. Think a nasty version of Splinter. Oh, and the heroes have to save Earth from a super villain, Lezardine (Benoite Chivot). Once the retreat starts, the film veers into anthology territory, as the heroes and other characters tell one uncanny and gruesome story after the other, including one about a woman who puts on a “thinking cap,” realizes she hates her husband, and then starts murdering those closest to her. In another segment, a young man, Christophe (Grégoire Ludig), gets stuck in a woodchipper and constantly apologizes as the machine chomps away at his body. These short segments are some of the most memorable and strangest aspects of the film, pulsating with offbeat humor. Loosely, they’re threaded together by references to tobacco.

Smoking Causes Coughing feels the most experimental and genre-bending of all of Dupieux’s work thus far. Just when it seems like the film is going to stay on one path, it suddenly veers from that. There’s even a talking barracuda that tells one of the stories and a cute robot, Nobert 500, voiced by Ferdinand Canaud, who suddenly commits suicide for no reason, only to return later as an upgraded version, Nobert 1200. Did I mention how odd this movie is? This also feels like Dupieux’s spoof and maybe even a knock on the constant barrage of Marvel films. After all, members of The Tobacco Force go around calling themselves “The Avengers.” Yet, this is no Disney/Marvel/PG film. Rubber fans will be happy to know that there’s plenty of gore here, though not quite as much as the director’s previous work. Still, it’s a fun and bonkers good time.

If you’re looking for something totally out there, then Smoking Causes Coughing is for you. This is the anthesis of an Avengers movie, while still technically a superhero movie. There’s plenty of blood, monsters in rubber suits, and left turns galore. Dupieux likely has another cult hit on his hands.

7 Out of 10