The Story Punk Podcast

This week on Story Punk, Psycho Summer continues with the French genre thriller Vincent Must Die, Stéphan Castang’s strange, unnerving 2023 film about one man who suddenly becomes the target of almost everyone he meets.

Karim Leklou stars as Vincent, an ordinary office worker whose life turns violently upside down when people begin attacking him for no apparent reason. The rules are simple enough to be terrifying: once someone makes eye contact with him, they may instantly become murderous. Coworkers, neighbors, strangers, police officers, random people on the street, anyone can become a threat. There is no plan, no conspiracy, no obvious explanation. Just one increasingly battered man trying to survive a world where looking someone in the eye might get him killed.

We dig into why Vincent Must Die fits so cleanly into Psycho Summer’s theme of hunted protagonists. Vincent is not being chased by one killer, one family, or one cult. He is being hunted by potential violence itself, hiding inside ordinary social interaction.

The conversation explores the film’s clever premise, its low-key approach to horror, its refusal to fully explain the phenomenon, and the uncomfortable survival questions that come with a world where basic human contact becomes dangerous. What happens when ordering food, talking to police, going to work, seeing a therapist, or even passing someone on the street can become a life-or-death situation?

They also discuss the movie’s shift from workplace satire to rural survival story to something closer to apocalyptic breakdown, along with Vincent’s connection to Margaux, the online Sentinel community, and the way the film turns eye contact, public spaces, hospitals, police stops, grocery stores, and family gatherings into traps.

We also debate whether the film’s ambiguity works, whether the ending expands the story too much, and how much explanation a movie like this actually needs. Is Vincent Must Die a zombie movie without zombies? A pandemic movie about social violence? A dark comedy about the threat of being perceived? Or simply a survival thriller where the monster is everyone?

Plus: self-stitching wounds, dangerous grocery stores, dogs as early-warning systems, It Follows, The Crazies, Looper, Tenet, French dubbing frustration, septic-tank combat, and why avoiding eye contact may be the most useful survival skill in cinema.

Listen now to Story Punk, because story matters.