Mia Wasikowska stars in the thriller film Club Zero as a teacher at an elite school who forms a disturbing bond with students, which takes a shocking turn.

Also starring in the film are Sidse Babett Knudsen, Elsa Zylberstein, Mathieu Demy, Amir El-Masry, Ksenia Devriendt, Luke Barker, Florence Baker, and Samuel D Anderson.

Release Date

Directed by Jessica Hausner, Club Zero premiered at the at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, and opens in cinemas on March 15, 2024

Synopsis

At an international boarding school, an unassuming, yet rigorous, Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska) joins the teaching staff to instruct a new class on “conscious eating.” Her impressionable teenage students each have their own reasons for joining the class – to improve fitness, reduce their carbon footprint, or get extra credit. Although early lectures focus on mindful consumption, Miss Novak’s discussions soon become increasingly disordered and extreme. A suspicious headmistress, concerned parents and the failing health of her students lead everyone to question the inscrutable Miss Novak’s motivations for teaching the class. As a few devoted pupils fall deeper under her cult-like tutelage, they are given a new, even more sinister goal to aspire to – joining the ominous “Club Zero.”

Combining a pitch-black comedic sensibility with elements of body horror, Club Zero satirizes contemporary inclinations toward myopic insularity and blind faith brought on by anxieties regarding food, consumerism and environmental catastrophe.

Reviews

Describing the film as an “Audaciously Disturbing Drama” in their review, Variety wrote, ““Club Zero” is a thriller because it’s based on our desire to see these children of the damned lured back from the abyss. The musical score, by Markus Binder, is a spooky yet satirical wonder, full of drums that sound like the background of Hare Krishna drone chants. The movie turns into a series of power duels between Miss Novak and the school headmistress, Miss Dorset (Sidse Babett Knudsen), as well as the parents, who the more outraged they are the more ineffectual they become. You can instruct teenagers to do certain things, but you can’t fight an eating disorder — or a cult — with force, especially if the cult is based on a cracked idea of one-upmanship. When Elsa, with her bulimia, faces off against her parents in her bedroom, showing them what her new food superiority really means, it’s a scene so horrifying — and not for the squeamish — that it generates a queasy catharsis.”

Official Trailer

Watch the official trailer for Club Zero