Repulsion

Carole Ledoux, a shy Belgian manicurist, lives a quiet, solitary life in London with her older sister Hélène Ledoux. From the outside, she appears calm and composed, but inside she carries a deep sense of detachment that makes even everyday interactions feel strained. A persistent suitor, Colin, tries to win her over with cautious enthusiasm, driving her home and pressing for closeness, only to be met with evasive replies and retreating footsteps as she slips away to her own private world. The tension between longing and withdrawal threads through her days, and the atmosphere outside her door grows steadily heavier as she clings to routines—especially her habit of brushing her teeth late at night and the uneasy sounds of life happening in the apartment above and beside hers.

Her growing unease is sharpened by Helen’s uneasy relationship with a married man named Michael, a presence that Carol dislikes and distrusts. He leaves his razor and toothbrush in her bathroom glass, a small, intimate intrusion that unsettles her further and foreshadows how deeply the personal bleed of others can intrude on her own space. Night after night, the sounds of Helen and Michael together seep into Carol’s half-formed sense of safety, turning the apartment into a pressure chamber where every noise becomes a threat.

One afternoon, a small crack in the pavement mirrors the fracture inside Carol. Colin crosses her path, and the encounter is awkward and uncomfortable; he drives her home and makes repeated attempts to kiss her, but she pulls away, fleeing upstairs to brush her teeth with frantic vigor before weeping in private. That same night, Helen asks about the toothbrush and razor in the trash, a tangle of housekeeping and intrusion that underscores how fragile Carol’s boundaries have become. Back at work, she grows increasingly distant from colleagues and customers, so much so that her boss decides to send her home early.

When Helen and Michael depart for Italy for a holiday, Carol is left alone in the apartment. A rabbit in the fridge becomes a macabre symbol of her disconnection from ordinary meals and rituals. She is distracted by Michael’s belongings scattered around the space, including an unwashed shirt whose odor makes her gag. She tries on one of Helen’s dresses and catches a dark figure in the mirror, as if the room itself is learning to imitate her fears. That night, she hears footsteps outside her bedroom and experiences a terrifying sequence in which she imagines a man breaking in and raping her. A phone call from Colin comes, but she hangs up, choosing solitude over contact.

Back at the salon, a moment of clumsiness leaves a client with a cut finger, and Carol is sent home early. A coworker discovers the uncooked rabbit’s head in Carol’s purse, a chilling sign that the boundary between fantasy and reality has dissolved. At the apartment, she studies an old family photo and witnesses the wall behind it crack and fracture just like a mirror, as if the house itself is tearing along with her mind. Colin arrives again, but Carol refuses to answer the door; he breaks in, professing his love, and she retaliates with shocking violence, bludgeoning him to death with a candlestick. Blood is cleaned, the front door barricaded, and Colin’s body placed in the bathtub. In bed, she endures another rape hallucination, waking to the same terrifying sense of violation in the dark corridor.

The next morning, Carol wanders the shadowed hallway, where hands emerge from the walls to grab at her. An upsetting telephone call from Michael’s wife arrives, and Carol cuts the wire, severing one more thread of connection. The landlord, Patrick Wymark, appears to collect the rent but finds the place in chaos. Unable to enter through the barricades, he breaks in anyway and eyes the state of the apartment—with the raw, rotting rabbit head and the overall decay you’d expect from a place consumed by fear. He propositions Carol to “take care of him” in exchange for letting the rent slide, and when she does not respond, he tries to force himself on her. She—again—fights back, using Michael’s straight razor to kill him, leaving the scene more brutal and desperate than before.

The return of Helen and Michael brings a new kind of horror. Helen is shocked by the apartment’s collapse into disorder, and Michael discovers Colin’s corpse in the bathtub. Helen finds Carol crouched under a bed in a catatonic state as neighbors stream in, and Michael carries Carol out of the room with a tense, uneasy smile. In the final image, a family photograph on the living-room wall shows Carol as a child, looking with loathing toward an older male figure in the frame, while others around her smile for the camera—an unsettling hint that the past still casts a long shadow over the present, and that loneliness can turn a home into a trap.

The film folds psychological dread into a stark, domestic landscape, where the quiet of a city apartment becomes the stage for a gradual breakdown. Through Carol’s increasing withdrawal, the story explores how isolation, intrusion, and fear can blur the line between reality and perception, culminating in a chilling confrontation with the world outside—or the parts of the self that refuse to be contained.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 11:18