French horror film "Evolution": Male pregnancy and probably other changes

[MindiFlyth]

A new French film at the TIFF festival got a lot of attention and is on its way to a release in the US. Evolution is a story about a bunch of young boys on an island with their mothers, but apparently as the film goes on we learn that these people aren't quite humans, the boys are going to be impregnated and their mothers aren't quite their mothers.

This review is pretty spoilery. It sounds intriguing, but there's still a lot we don't know. The mothers are described as "Stepford-like" and I get the impression there may be a monstrous element to them. Apparently we eventually find out why there are no men on the island, and I'm wondering if there may be some TG element there, like maybe the boys eventually become the "mothers". Apparently there's some "body horror" here, and I get the feeling that the pregnancy stuff is dealt with in some detail.

I'll be very curious to learn more.

[MindiFlyth]

Here's a short clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkKZ2qx5f6g. It's not much, just a short scene showing one of the boys swimming and a glimpse of some of the women and kids on the island. They're calling it a teaser, but it seems more like a random bit of footage, really.

[thrandrall]

This review looks pretty good: http://twitchfilm.com/2015/09/toront...g-mystery.html

[T.L.]

Is there anymore synopsis? I don't care for horror films, but the story sounds a little interesting.

[j3st3r]

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015...-film-festival

Sounds interesting. Any ideas on release dates? Just did quite a few searches but came up dry for trying to find a copy of it.

"Nicolas undergoes a series of medical experiments that deal with the horrors of puberty in new, innovative and disturbing ways."

[MindiFlyth]

A little more info, from Buzzfeed:

Noodles like white worms in gray-green sludge, supposedly human flesh studded with suckers like an octopus, and a very unsettling ultrasound — even the seemingly innocuous opening shot of Evolution, of a boy swimming in the ocean, seen from below, is troubling. The prettiness of the image doesn’t detract from the fact that he looks spookily like an organism flailing on a microscope slide. Nicolas (Max Brebant) is in fact the subject of mysterious medical tests and treatments, along with every other kid on the remote island in which he lives — one entirely populated by grown women and the young boys for whom they care.

Evolution is only the second film from French director Lucile Hadzihalilovic, whose 2004 Innocence is also singular and haunting. And though this one lingers like a fable impossible to fully understand, it’s also gorgeous and disturbing as all hell — part strange adolescent metaphor, part body horror saga, the film builds unease through gradual reveals about life and the life cycle on the island. Rather than trying to parse all the details, it’s better to just let the imagery and all of the nightmare biology sink in.

How to see it: Evolution will be released in theaters in the U.S. by Alchemy.

This is one of those situations where as a fan of artsy indie pictures I'd like to see it without spoilers... but as a fan of transformation stuff I'd like to have a better idea what we're in for. I'm sort of hoping that somebody here will see it and post a mostly spoiler-free review to let us know if this is one for the transformation fans or if it's more of a dark, scary horror thing.