Based on the École Polytechnique mass shooting in Montreal in 1989, Villeneuve’s bold depiction of unfathomable, senseless violence follows an anonymous young man (Maxim Gaudette) as he embarks on a horrific misogynist killing spree at the titular engineering school. An aesthetically uncompromising horror film made all the more horrifying by its being painstakingly drawn from real events, Polytechnique is a virtuosic and terribly absorbing portrait of violence in its most extreme form.