Species

The everyday dreadfulness of stressful working environments and unreasonable demands placed on young employees is given a blackly comic blood-soaked body horror workout by first-time feature director Marion Le Coroller in Species. The French title – Sanguine – is somewhat less generic and more apt, since it references the Latin for “blood”, of which there is plenty, but also (contrary to the way the English would refer to someone as cooly sanguine), implies hot-headedness.

Playing in Cannes’ Midnight section, Species’ female protagonist and the body punishment on display mean it shares considerable DNA with Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance – not least the presence of special effects ace Pierre-Olivier Persin, who delivers several queasily extravagant mutation sequences. The plotting, however, is somewhat more wayward.

Le Coroller, expanding from her short film Dieu N’est Plus Medecin (God Is No Longer A Doctor), sets the tone in a prologue. In a fast-food joint named Bloody Burger, the name of which sounds even funnier with a French accent, a young server with a rictus grin is attempting to deal with a demanding influencer, as a manager berates him for spending too long on the customer via an earpiece. When the server loses it, quite spectacularly, Le Coroller does not look away from the violence and you may never think about smash burgers in quite the same way again.

Having established the darkly satiric and visceral vibe, which is emphasised by a red-inflected palette throughout, we head to a bustling hospital A&E, where Margot (Mara Taquin) is a fresh meat intern in a team run by the unforgiving Professor Virgile (Karen Viard). In order to emphasise the horrendousness of the set-up – and Le Coroller definitely doesn’t hold back on emphasis at any point – Margot is billeted in a room with suspiciously bloody looking stains on the mattress and a window that won’t open. Fellow intern Louis (Sami Outalbali) cheerfully points it’s to stop them committing suicide as he breaks the lock.

This is just the start of the stress that is exacerbated by a league table of sorts, on the wall, on which the interns, including Louis and highflier Pauline (Kim Higelin) are constantly jockeying for position. Additional volatility comes courtesy of sexual tension between the trio. Le Coroller zeroes in on the psychological stress Margot is under at the same time as introducing a pregnant patient who is having trouble sleeping and who Margot sees is sporting a disturbing rash, but who flees before treatment. Soon the medic experiences symptoms that mirror this, with blood first appearing in odd places and, not long after, by the bucketload, giving the phrase, “they expect you to sweat blood” a quite literal incarnation.

As Margot tries to work out what on earth is happening to her, the plot does dart about somewhat, but Le Coroller’s horror is at its best when it focuses on Margot’s psychological meltdown as she works against the clock. This is emphasised by queasy camerawork from Guillame Schiffman, which has wide-angle oddness in some places, and in-Margot’s-face POV in others, all set to a racing score from ROB – aka French musician Robin Coudert, who also composed the score for fellow Cannes entry In Waves. Margot's job takes a pound of flesh and more and the body horror element should satisfy aficionados, although the satiric pay-off concerning why the younger generation may actually be being driven to evolve in this fashion feels somewhat unearned.

Taquin's performance is has a naturalistic element that makes the madness enveloping her all the more grotesque and despite a little first-time feature unruliness, Le Coroller delivers plenty of blood, sweat and fears.

Reviewed on: 02 Jun 2026