Climax ★★

Gaspar Noé’s never met a drug he didn’t like—and he doesn’t like much else. In Climax, the provocateur’s psychoactive substance of choice is LSD, secretly dripped into a bowl of sangria at the sprawling French schoolhouse where the film’s dance troupe is rehearsing, but the drug may as well be lust, or sin, or time itself. It’s unfortunate that, despite the film’s exhilarating dance sequences and clear aesthetic vision, its moral and political stance is still vague—a non-specific dive into debauchery and badness that’s full of Noé’s typical nihilism but lacks an actual point. As the Climax troupe guzzles the aforementioned sangria, an already volatile environment of hormones and rivalries descends into absolute chaos, replete with sexual intimidation, child imperilment, murder, incest and more, but the film never regains the energy and creativity of its first dance. Although the large cast of mostly amateur actors is introduced through individual talking heads in the film’s intro sequence, it’s hard to keep track of who’s who—we only get something of a main character in Selva (Sofia Boutella), the group’s choreographer. But Noé isn’t interested in his characters as people, only as bodies, themes and images. In the beginning, the camera of cinematographer Benoît Debie is distant and largely static, becoming more intrusive and chaotic as things go haywire. The result is an interesting visual experiment, but a tedious and ultimately hollow one—scenes from other Euro horrors like Possession and Suspiria aren’t so much referenced as flat-out recreated, as if Climax doesn’t have anything new to add. At Kendall Square and Somerville.