Alpha (2026)
Directed by: Julia Ducournau
Premise: A teenage girl (Mélissa Boros) bonds with her heroin-addicted uncle (Tahar Rahim). Her mother, a doctor, treats patient with a mysterious blood-borne condition that transforms them into marble.
What Works: The family drama of Alpha is its best quality. The title character is a teenager facing familiar adolescent challenges at school and at home. In the opening scene, Alpha is passed out at a party and someone tattoos her arm while she’s unconscious. The fallout of the tattoo kicks off a conflict between Alpha and her mother. At school, Alpha is bullied by her fellow students especially when the tattoo causes fear that Alpha might be infected with a blood-based virus. Alpha’s story is a familiar teen narrative but it is presented with a grim reality and a organic feel. She meets her uncle Amin who is a recovering heroin addict and Alpha and Amin are drawn together by their shared misfit status. The relationship between the three leads is convincing. As is so often the case in families, love and tension coexist. Alpha’s mother tries to save her brother from himself and keep her daughter from following his path. The performances by the lead actors are quite good, especially Mélissa Boros as Alpha and Tahar Rahim as her uncle. The movie does not soften its portraits of adolescence and addiction and the movie’s visceral quality is one of its outstanding features.
What Doesn’t: Filmmaker Julia Ducournau has a distinct cinematic style and Alpha mixes gritty reality with surrealism. However, what distinguished her films Raw and Titane doesn’t quite work in Alpha. The moviemakers imagine a blood-borne virus that turns infected people into marble. The disease recalls recent epidemics, namely AIDS and the opioid crisis. It’s not a bad idea but the story already deals with heroin addiction in a literal way through Alpha’s uncle. This makes the metaphor redundant. The whole point of using a metaphor is to capture something complex in a concise symbol or to make a controversial subject palatable for a general audience. Alpha doesn’t gain anything from its metaphor. The filmmakers also stumble in their attempt to construct a nonlinear narrative. Not everything between Alpha and her uncle is as it initially appears. The interweaving of past and present is just confusing and the big reveal in the ending creates all sorts of retroactive logical problems for the rest of the movie.
Bottom Line: Alpha is only partially successful. The scenes of adolescent struggles and family drama have a raw reality to them but the surrealism is superfluous and the larger themes don’t come together.
Episode: #1093 (April 5, 2026)