Title – Alpha (2025)

Director – Julia Ducournau (Titane)

Cast – Mélissa Boros, Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim

Plot – Troubled 13-year-old girl Alpha (Boros) lives with her single mother Maman (Farahani) and when a deadly virus changes the world and the arrival of Maman’s estranged addict brother Amin (Rahim) occurs, Alpha must navigate a whole new way of life.  

“Love leaves a mark”

Review by Eddie on 15/07/2026

In the space of a few feature films, French writer/director Julia Ducournau has created quite the name for herself and in turn high expectations from critics and audiences with her latest body horror outing Alpha unable to capture the same magic she managed to infuse into her renowned debut Raw in 2016 and adored sophomore feature Titane from 2021.

Premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a coveted Palme d’Or nomination, Alpha came and went with little fanfare later in the year with many, both critics and audiences alike, staying cold on a film that is clearly an assuredly made feature but one that frustrates in more ways than one, struggling to make its mark as a unique and confronting exploration of grief and loss in a world gone mad.

Clocking in at just over two hours, Alpha’s attention is centred around Mélissa Boros’s titular rebellious 13-year-old and her relationship with her hardworking mother Maman (a very good Golshifteh Farahani) and her addict uncle Amin (a near unrecognisable Tahar Rahim), relationships complicated by the possibility Alpha has potentially contracted a deadly bloodborne disease that has started to decimate the world around her.

Sharing DNA with her previous two body horror affairs, Alpha is also a far tamer and less wince-inducing ride than what we’ve come to expect from Ducournau and while you wouldn’t call Alpha a film of mass audience appeal or a stereotypically easy to access movie, it’s a film that showcases a different side to the filmmaker for better and worse and at the very least proves that Ducournau is more than a shock jockey who’s films are built around titillation and visceral intensity.

Filmed in a non-linear fashion with events taking place in the past and present in not always easy to decipher ways, there’s an oddness and eccentricity running throughout Alpha’s happenings and the way in which Ducournau explores important themes of adolescence, family bonds and societal problems can be commended for not taking the easy route but there’s a lot of under developed plot threads and undercooked ingredients in Ducournau’s feature, holding it back from connecting, clearly showcasing why Alpha failed to make a mark on initial release.

There’re components of Alpha that could potentially make it a candidate for a future cult favourite and the performances of the films central trio are all notable but overall, it feels as though Alpha is a misstep from Ducournau, far from a complete failure but a frustratingly cold attempt at something special nonetheless.

Final Say –

Unable to match the successes of Ducournau’s first two notable cinematic features, Alpha has its moments but finishes up being a skippable release from a writer/director the industry has rightfully very high expectations of.

2 1/2 bandages out of 5