In the week of Halloween, we turn our attention to Julia Ducournau, who, after her Golden Palm for the frenzied Titane, returns with Alpha: a horror drama as hallucinatory as it is enigmatic about a mysterious virus outbreak. In an unnamed French town, thirteen-year-old Alpha becomes infected with a disease that slowly turns her into stone — literally. What follows is a visually overwhelming fever dream about physical alienation, stigma and family decline.  

The disease that turns people into marble statues inevitably brings to mind the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, and Alpha makes no secret of this. Yet it remains merely suggestive: the script navigates between intimate melodrama and grotesque body horror without really delving into either direction. Ducournau’s distinctive visual language — grim, sensual and full of unexpected beauty — makes Alpha a unique viewing experience that lingers in the mind, even if its meaning remains largely shrouded in mystery.  

For those who dare: a horror film that is not afraid to be beautiful, and a family drama set on the brink of the abyss.