Development The film is loosely based on the true story of a French dance troupe in the 1990s who had their alcoholic beverage spiked with LSD at an
after-party; no further incidents took place during the actual event, unlike in the film. The idea of making a film based around dance came to Noé in late November/December 2017, when he was invited to a
vogue ballroom by Léa Vlamos (who would eventually be a part of the film's cast): "I couldn't believe the energy and the crowd – and then I thought, I'd love to film these kind of people. I'd also seen that movie by
David LaChapelle called
Rize, about
krumping. I was amazed by these young kids dancing like they were possessed by evil forces." Although he originally felt inspired to make a
documentary film about dance, he came up with the idea of
Climax in early January 2018. He used 1970s films for additional inspiration, including
The Towering Inferno,
The Poseidon Adventure and
Shivers.
Casting The film was cast over the month of January 2018. It was mostly made of dancers with no acting experience, as Noé found the cast himself mostly in ballrooms, krumping battles, or on the internet. As vogue and krumping are largely individual dances, most of the cast had no experience dancing as a group, or in synchronization. The film's choreographer, Nina McNeely, is the one who had the idea of casting
Sofia Boutella. Another long take central to the film lasts over 42 minutes, almost half of the film's running time; Noé stated that "I was operating the camera but I had no idea how I was going to frame the scenes until immediately before I was on the set. I especially wanted the second half of the movie to be one continuous
master shot, but how it was going to be I had no idea." About the opening shot, in which Lou is seen screaming in the snow and the end credits roll, Noé stated: "I look at [the film as] a book and there is a prologue, or at the end an epilogue, a bibliography, or an additional personal note. In the case of this movie, the first exaggerated scene with her being bloody, crying in the snow, it wasn't meant to be. It was just snowing in Paris for two days and the second day, I thought about possibly taking advantage of the weather. We got a drone and filmed the girl in the snow from above. I didn't know how to use that footage at first. Later in the movie when they open the door, I thought that could fit in with the previous footage, if we made it snow outside and make it look like they were locked in. So I got some snow machines to re-create the whole thing. When people mentioned that there was some reference to
The Shining it wasn't that at all. I liked the idea of getting rid of the credits at the beginning of the movie. I hate ending credits. I like movies from the 40s, 50s of which movies would end abruptly. So, I knew how I wanted to end the movie. I found like a satanic icon that I could put before the movie starts. Like an omen, that's something is going to turn bad, there was going to be a big drama, that the world is going to turn to hell." There was no clear ending in mind while the actors were improvising. According to Noé, the only narrative directive given to the cast about the end of the story was that "the most fragile ones would die at the end! Only the strong survive." The interview tapes featured early in the film were not originally planned, but Noé's
line producer suggested that the cast should have talked more in the film, and came up with the idea of interviewing them for possible extra footage for the home media release; it was eventually added to the film. Those scenes were also completely improvised. While he had also featured drugs in previous films, Noé decided to have a different approach in
Climax: "I didn't want to do any visual or sound effects to reproduce the feeling you are having when you're on drugs. I thought it would be funny to do it the other way, like shoot almost documentary style with long cuts, seeing how the effects of drugs and alcohol are experienced, how its seen from the outside. Like how it all shows and not how it feels." He also left the cast free to have their characters react to LSD in whichever way they preferred, as people can react very differently to it in real life: "They were all quite keen to get to the second part of the shoot, with the drugs and everything going crazy. I showed them all these videos; people high on LSD, mushrooms, crack, whatever. Then after, I asked each one how they would want to portray their own craziness."
Music The soundtrack features music by
Daft Punk,
Aphex Twin,
Giorgio Moroder,
Soft Cell,
Dopplereffekt,
Cerrone, and
Chris Carter amongst others, as well as an original song by Daft Punk's
Thomas Bangalter, who had previously composed the score to Noé's
Irréversible. == Release ==