Pandemonium is a creatively structured horror film regarding the other side/ afterlife. The 2023 French production blurs 'n' blends in elements of fantasy, grim drama, and ghoulish oddness/ unhinge-ness to create an original & distinctive experience- which will fascinate, trouble, and at points freak you out.  Here from Arrow Video- both in the UK & Stateside is a Blu-ray release of the film- featuring a nice selection of extras, and the usual care/ class we've come to expect from an Arrow release.

Pandemonium is written and directed by Quarxx.  He has eight director credits to his name- these take in six shorts, and one other feature All The Gods In The Sky (2018), a bizarre sci-fi horror. 

The film opens on an isolated mountain road. We see a bearded fortysomething man lying in the middle of the road, and in time we find out he is named Nathan (Hugo Dillon). He has just seemingly come around and is glad that he seems to have survived a bad car crash.

Near his crashed car is a second man of a similar age, who we find out is named Daniel (Arben Bajraktaraj). Nathan knocked him down, and he is now insisting that they are both dead- with this being fairly quickly proved as Nathan's bloody, battered, and very much dead body is in the driving seat.

As the first part of the film unfolds two doorways appear on the road- one with a white ornate door frame, and the other with open red doors- from the first doorway is coming the sound of beautiful music, and the second many, many screams.  And fairly soon both men are forced to make a choice.

At the midway point, we switch focus on just one of the men. He discovers two sets of bodies in the place he’s landed up in, for each, we get a story. The first one regards a young girl in a large house who finds both of her parents dead, and discovers a lumbering & deformed male figure in the basement. The second story tells of a career woman and her bullied daughter- who makes a series of grim decisions.  Before we once again return to the original man to find out his fate.

The whole thing is wonderfully shot- blending real-life locations with strange & grimly disturbing fantasy elements. Both male leads are believable- really selling their now-dead predicament. The casts in the two shorter stories are equally good, and each of these is troublingly macabre, at points emotionally fraught, and all-round darkly weird creations.

Being jaded/thinks he's seen-it-all-all horror fan.  I don't often get surprised by the genre - but I can safely say Pandemonium is such a wonderful surprise. Due to its original/ surprising structure, its good production values, and its general troubling/ weird tone. 
 

Moving onto this new Blu-ray, we get a good selection of extras. New wise we have Different Textures (19.58) interview with writer/ director Quarxx. He begins by talking about how he wants his work to avoid genre-labelled/ pigeonholed, and how he wants to create something different from what you’ve seen 50 times before. He discusses how he came to the after his first feature All The Gods In The Sky, and how the original script was going to nine stories to connect into the nine circles of hell. He talks about the filming at the mountain location, and how the whole film was captured chronologically.  So it’s well worth playing the interview. Otherwise, we get Tony The Monster (16.46) interview with Quarxx and special make-up/FX supervisor Olivier Afonso. Filming A Real Birth (4.44) interview with Quarxx sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of a birth.

On the archive side, we get footage of the film's 2023 premier (3.58), a making of (27.37), and a trailer.

It’s great to see Arrow are still hunting down the most original/interesting in modern genre fare to release. If you enjoy a thought-provoking, creative, and clever mixing of horror, fantasy, and dark drama then Pandemonium is for you. Pandemonium releases on Limited Edition Blu-ray and ARROW from 27th May