Eat the Night
Directed by Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel
Written by Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel & Guillaume Bréaud
Starring Lila Gueneau, Théo Cholbi, Erwan Kepoa Falé
Not Rated
Runtime: 1 hour, 46 minutes
Opening in select theaters on January 10th

by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

It boggles the mind to think of how many bad depictions of video games there have been in movies and TV shows. And, of course, there’s two different kinds of “bad,” at least by my estimation. You have the ones that look fake—stock footage or just some kind of nonsense made in a game engine. I often think of how the game in the show Mythic Quest has no internal logic for the way it looks or behaves because it’s made up of random bits of different games by Ubisoft, who co-produce the series. Then you have the fake gaming. No matter how good or bad the game looks, you can always count on the character playing it to seem like they’ve never picked up a controller in their life. 2024’s Anora was the most recent case of this on a large stage. All of which is to say that Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s Eat the Night simply doesn’t have either of those problems.

The film is about a brother and sister who grew up playing a MMORPG called Darknoon. At the start of the film we, along with the siblings, find out that Darknoon is getting shut down around Christmas, quite soon in the context of the story. This world that Apolline (Lila Gueneau) and Pablo (Théo Cholbi) know and love is going to disappear from the face of the internet, and there’s nothing they can do about it. However, this isn’t a story about them saving the game because there are much more serious things happening in Le Havre—at least for Pablo. 

Apolline and Pablo, shown together at the start of the film as two siblings who have been taking care of each other in spite of their absent father, are largely separated throughout the film. Apolline is much more withdrawn, devastated by the news of the game shutting down, while Pablo is moving on with his life. He meets a man named Night (Erwan Kepoa Falé), who Pablo starts to romance and brings into his small-time drug selling business. But when a rival drug dealer and his gang get wind of Pablo and Night’s business, things get serious for both of them. 

Eat the Night is at once a deeply interesting thriller, keeping its pacing and twists in perfect harmony, and a meditation on loneliness and connection. The two distinct halves of the film meld together into something emotional and heartbreaking. While the gang and drug dealing aspects of the film doesn’t feel quite as integrated as the queer romance and the video game storyline, the result of it impacts all three characters in unique ways. It acts as the main plot driver, with the countdown to Darknoon shutting down as a ticking clock of fate in the background.

Then there’s the video game of it all. As I mentioned, Eat the Night does a great job with the video game at the center of this story. It looks good and I was particularly impressed by the way the UI looks when the film cuts into it. Even the things that are kinda weird and feel anachronistic to the setting of the game have a sort of surreal Fortnite vibe to them—which is not necessarily the MMORPG thing, but it doesn’t feel totally wrong. I also love the touch that Apolline plays on PC, but uses a controller—and that actress Lila Gueneau isn't exaggerating what that looks like. Instead, you believe she’s been playing this game for her entire life and the realism of it makes the connection, and her sadness about the ending of it, hit even harder. 

But something I love more about these parts of the film are when they finally decide to cut in and do what looks like motion capture performances for Apolline and a mysterious new player she meets online, right before the game shuts down. The film cuts back and forth after that moment between the in-game look and the motion capture aesthetics, allowing the motion capture moments to feed into the ideas of connection—particularly how Apolline connects to people. 

What Poggi and Vinel have created here with Eat the Night is a standout of modern cinema. It’s integrating technology and different types of storytelling into more traditional filmmaking and allowing them to inform and deepen the themes the filmmakers associate with each aspect. But it’s also modern because of how the film uses technology as part of the story, not just as a mode of telling the story. In our current world, it makes sense to use technology, including the internet, to put a finer point on themes like loneliness and connection because it’s how many people understand and feel those emotions in a meaningful way. Eat the Night is a thrilling parable of the modern ways emotional yearning manifests with electric performances and stunning visuals.

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