The Big Picture

Rumours
is a bizarre dark horror-comedy with a cast of world leaders in a zombie apocalypse.
The film satirizes the incompetency of leaders in crises, with a campy, melodramatic tone.
The cast, including Cate Blanchett and Charles Dance, elevates the film despite its aimless plot.

Take seven of the world leaders, have them act like horny teenagers out of a soap opera, and throw them into a zombie apocalypse, all while Charles Dance plays the U.S. President with an imperial English accent. The logline alone tells you that Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, and Guy Maddin’s Rumours is straight-up bizarre. A dark comedy with hints of melodrama set against a Romero-esque gothic horror backdrop, this movie spends its runtime throwing bonkers surprises at you. Some stick and some don’t. It has hilariously absurd moments that take aim at the stupidity and incompetency of the people we elect into power, and how they’re no better equipped to deal with crises than the average person. It ultimately strays too far into the bizarre and loses direction as it reaches its climax, but the journey getting there offers a lot of fun. And by far the film’s greatest asset is its cast. Rumours won’t be for everyone, but if you don’t mind a large dollop of strangeness to go along with the cinematic tradition of taking down and ridiculing those in power, there’s a lot to enjoy in this wacky satire.

Rumours (2024) Rumours follows the leaders of seven wealthy democracies who find themselves lost in the woods during a G7 summit while drafting a statement on a global crisis. As they navigate the forest, they encounter bizarre threats like undead bog bodies and a giant brain. These surreal experiences expose the absurdities of their political lives and interactions, blending dark comedy with political satire.Release Date May 18, 2024 Director Guy Maddin , Evan Johnson , Galen Johnson Runtime 118 Minutes Writers Guy Maddin , Evan Johnson , Galen Johnson Studio(s) Square Peg , Buffalo Gal Pictures , Maze Pictures Distributor(s) Elevation Pictures , Plaion Pictures Expand

What Is ‘Rumours’ About?
The group of leaders collectively known as the G7 are meeting in Germany to work on a provisional statement to address an ongoing crisis that the movie never specifies. This includes the Chancellor of Germany, Helga (Cate Blanchett), the President of the United States, Edison (Charles Dance), the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Cardosa (Nikki Amuka-Bird), the Prime Minister of Canada, Maxime (Roy Dupuis), the President of France, Sylvain (Denis Ménochet), the Prime Minister of Italy, Antonio (Rolando Ravello), and the Prime Minister of Japan, Tatsuro (Takehiro Hira). All seems to be going well, as Helga welcomes them by showing her colleagues a two-thousand-year-old mummified body. The seven heads of state pose proudly beside the corpse which we know is a man because its penis has been severed and wrapped around his neck. Cheese!

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The group is on a remote estate and has a private dinner to discuss the provisional statement. This is where the dynamics between the leaders fully come into play. Maxime is the fuckboy of the gang who has a history with Cardosa, but that doesn’t stop Helga from doing her best to flirt with him. There’s no phone service and the waiters seemed to have disappeared. When Sylvain ventures out to retrieve some papers, he discovers that the group has been totally abandoned. The G7 leaders are then attacked by “shady figures.” Have the mummies been resurrected to take back their ancestral ground? Has an alien invasion taken over the world and these incompetent politicians are all that’s left of the human race? The group must band together to make it off the estate and get to the bottom of whatever is going on.

‘Rumours’ Is Camp Dark Comedy
Image Via Karlovy Vary Film Festival

Rumours is at its best when it’s focused on making its main characters into impetuous dumbasses. It goes into camp comedy as it sometimes genuinely feels like you’re watching an episode of an early 2000s teen drama. Maxime, complete with a side fade and man bun, is the bad boy who runs into the woods crying over the many, many ladies he’s banged while a horny Helga is hellbent on becoming the next. The movie immediately brings some of the most powerful people in the world back down to touch grass. A melodramatic score only rivaled by May December hammers this home; when Maxime tries to reminisce on a night spent with Cardosa, a smooth sexy jazz tune sweeps in. When Sylvain is rambling about the horrors that are at play, we get a dizzying close-up of his face, straight out of a 1960s British gothic horror movie. A thick fog wraps around the group as they make their way through the woods, at times resembling an old Scooby-Doo or Terence Fisher’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. The directors’ style pairs perfectly with the wild script that shifts the tone from comedy to melodrama to satire to horror from scene to scene.

The first half of the movie runs on the fuels of how bizarre the situation is and the pure entertainment of seeing these world leaders act like complete idiots. Then things take a turn for the even weirder when a massive human brain shows up and a rambling Alicia Vikander as the secretary-general of the European Commission warns of a doomsday while no one can understand her. What starts out as a fun and well-executed concept falls into a directionless plot that can’t decide how it wants to end. The fun and humor run dry with the pacing becoming stilted and the metaphor for bad leadership sidelined by masturbating mummies. It becomes a bit too silly to appreciate or follow, even if we’ve been having a great time up until now.

Cate Blanchett Leads an Excellent Cast in ‘Rumours’
The cast of Rumours is what elevates it to the point that it’s still worth watching despite this aimless plot. Cate Blanchett is at her horniest and most pathetic as the German chancellor who thinks with her pants instead of her head. Roy Dupuis manages to make a Prime Minister a swoony, broody loser who writes poetic suicide notes because he can’t do his job properly. Who really is chewing up the political scenery, though, is Denis Ménoche who plays the French President like a caricature of Poirot (and who many will recognize from that opening scene in Inglourious Basterds). He’s not afraid to lean fully into camp and ham his way through his monologues of democracy, yet still can’t hide his disdain for Canada. The rest of the cast fill their archetypes brilliantly, especially Amuka-Bird’s level-headed British PM (a little too generous a depiction given current events). Why Charles Dance is donning a British accent, even when the film tries to make a joke of it, I still don’t know.

Leave your expectations behind when going into Rumors. It’s a weird film that eventually gets lost in itself, but there’s still much to be appreciated. From the perfectly chosen cast to the elements of camp, comedy, and horror, to seeing Cate Blanchett tripping over herself to earn the attention of a political softboi, Rumours aims to do something different with political satire and “eat the rich” cinema, and it certainly achieves that. However, it will still leave you with three words: “What the fuck?”

REVIEW Rumours (2024) Rumours is a camp, dark comedy with elements of horror that ends up becoming too strange for its own good.ProsThe campy horror elements are executed brilliantly, mixing well with the absurd comedy.Cate Blanchett heads a fantastic cast that makes the movie worth watching even if it falls off at the end. ConsRumours’ second half feels aimless and gets lost in the bizarreness of the situation.

Rumours screened at the 2024 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.