I wasn't prepared for the fact that the setting is a post apocalypse.

I thought this would be a psychological horror told from the perspective of two murderers who are slowly losing their minds as they come to terms with their crime. That element is certainly present here. But what terrified me even more were the segments from the perspective of the murdered man’s paralyzed mother, who is forced to watch every day as her son’s killers relive their crime and whose only joy in life is watching them eventually destroy each other.

The ending, though, in my opinion, turned out to be a bit too romantic.

Ideas of separation had, indeed, occurred to both of them. Each had thought of flight, of seeking some repose far from this Arcade of the Pont Neuf where the damp and filth seemed adapted to their desolated life. But they dared not, they could not run away. It seemed impossible for them to avoid reviling each other, to avoid remaining there to suffer and cause pain. They proved obstinate in their hatred and cruelty. A sort of repulsion and attraction separated and kept them together at the same time. They behaved in the identical manner of two persons who, after quarrelling, wish to part, and who, nevertheless, continue returning to shout out fresh insults at one another.

That, Monsieur Zola, is what we call an “emotional roller coaster.”