Critics reviews

Gone is the visceral body horror and relentless pacing that the visionary director has become known for. Here, Ducournau opts for a story both sprawling and soft — but if you’re willing to dredge through the swirling sands, it is just as complex and impactful as her previous offerings.

Alpha is more evidence of Ducournau’s genius for evocative imagery and striking compositions, but it also suggests she’d benefit from boundaries to push against.

Alpha, a moody and then terrifying family drama that is practically restrained compared to its two predecessors—and yet it’s also a skin-crawling, stomach-turning, gasp-inducing deep dive into the abyss that will leave you shaken when you finally emerge from it... it's a wild, fascinatingly weird, and worthwhile ride nonetheless... With Alpha, Ducournau has completed quite the trifecta when it comes to portraying the horrors of being a woman, and I, for one, can’t wait to see what she does next.

Alpha is teeming with ideas, even if not all of them mesh in a story that uses some old-school auditory persuasions to try to win us around... [There's] an emotional heart beneath a veneer of horror-tinged genre elements.

It’s a proxy for Aids, but the gap of separation from real life allows Ducournau to tell a story that hums with imagination. She has found a new way to talk about memory, trauma, addiction and illness — sometimes baffling but always striking. Her central trio are excellent, as is a soundtrack featuring Portishead, Nick Cave and Tame Impala.

Though Alpha is overwhelmed by its thematic concerns, Ducournau still creates arresting imagery in the harsh color palate and dystopic world she depicts. Along with absolutely stunning performances, Alpha transcends its flaws to be another stunning, destined-to-be-divisive film from Ducournau.

“Alpha”, then, is a mature work of aching vulnerability — a shocking development in the career of a director whose two previous features this writer perceives as those of a person on the defensive... Through its complex structure, formed of different timelines and split realities, uncanny dreams and blurred memories, “Alpha” viscerally teases out the binds of love and trauma.

Less overwhelming than Titane, Alpha may have a tighter grip on the real world... the crises in Alpha’s short life may arrive cyclically, like the coming of a desert wind, but these repetitions smack of confusion for its own sake. The film’s sheer, unrelenting squalor can wear you down, too. Those three performances, on the other hand, are indelible triumphs. Along with the power of Ducournau’s cinematic vision, of course, which carries all the ordure in the world before it.

She [Ducournau] deserves credit, though, for thinking outside the box and having the skill to visualize such thoughts. Teaming up for the third time with Belgian cinematographer Ruben Impens, the director creates startling images from the very first shot...to the last...

It would have been more powerful if Ducournau had dealt with AIDS directly, rather than a process that mutates flesh into marble, before dissolving away into dust. In the end, this surreal fossilization process is so lovely, it inadvertently undermines the horrors that have come before, providing a cathartic image with which to wrap Ducournau’s nightmare.

Ducournau is not here to follow a familiar path. Instead, she pushes us and herself as a filmmaker into something deeper, creating her most exciting, emotional, existential and eviscerating work yet. It tears through the soul, along with some flesh.

Alpha is an inherently vulnerable film, no gross-out moments or big body horror showstoppers for us – or Ducournau – to hide behind. Alpha is as thorny as her previous two features, but there’s something lonely and longing here too... For all its cool stone, Alpha is not a cold film, and vibrates with life in the way Raw pulsed with desire and Titane with white-hot fury.