Rumours is a 2024 comedy horror film written and directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Roy Dupuis, Denis Ménochet, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Takehiro Hira, Zlatko Burić, and Alicia Vikander.
Rumours had its world premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2024. The film received generally positive reviews from critics.
Contents
Plot
World leaders meet at the G7 at a German hotel to compose a statement about an unspecified crisis, failing to take it seriously. The Canadian Prime Minister is upset that the British Prime Minister won't allow them to rekindle a past affair and ends up trysting with the German Chancellor in the woods instead. After sunset the French Prime Minister returns to the outdoor gazebo where they had been working and dining to inform them of the presence of reanimated bog bodies they had seen excavated earlier in the day, and they also realize due to the absence of their servers all other people have mysteriously vanished.
They venture out to find anyone they can but get lost in the woods beset by thick fog and puzzled by a giant brain only the suddenly Swedish-speaking President of the European Commission (whom none of them can understand) believes will be a game-changer for the world, but in her despair that none of them seem to grasp the gravity of the situation, she sets herself and the brain on fire. Attempting to get a response on the emergency phone line, they reach only an artificial intelligence apparently designed to trap child predators but play along with it in an attempt to find their way back to their hotel.