When you're so conditioned to the warzone, re-entering the 'real' world can be challenging, and often just as terrifying. Director Alice Winocour went to great depths to explore this idea of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in former soldiers with her gripping new thriller 'Disorder'.

Matthias SchoenaertsMatthias Schoenaerts stars in 'Disorder'

It's no secret that men and women often return from military combat changed beyond recognition. The horrors of war leave scars that never fade, and often these troops are forced to live the rest of their lives in fear; looking over their shoulders every single day overwhelmingly paranoid, even in the comfort of their mundane home lives, they struggle to shake those ingrained thoughts of violence and brutality they once saw. In 'Disorder', a new thriller directed by Alice Winocour ('Augustine'), we follow the after-effects in one man who returns from Afghanistan and takes on a security job.

Vincent Loreau (played by Matthias Schoenaerts who recently appeared in 'The Danish Girl') is hired as a security official at the house of a rich businessman during one of his family's luxurious parties. Vincent is sensing something is wrong, but it's impossible to understand whether or not it's all in his head. Needless to say, he's forced to act on his instincts when the businessman leaves his family - including his child and wife Jessie (Diane Kruger) - in Vincent's hands to attend to a business matter. 

Watch the trailer for 'Disorder' here:


 

The idea for 'Disorder' came through Winocour's meeting with soldiers returning from Afghanistan. 'They talked about their fears, their anxiety, their mental distress and their inner violence. All these sorrows that we like to group under the term 'PostTraumatic Stress Disorder' prevents soldiers from going back to war zones', she explained. 'They are conditioned psychologically to go beyond their limits, to become death machines, and when they come back, they feel inadequate. A Special Forces soldier told me that ever since his return, he couldn't see children in the same way and he sometimes pictured them killing other people with stones.'

Matthias Schoenaerts and Diane Kruger'Disorder' explores PTSD in former soldiers

As such, we see Vincent's PTSD in much the same way and in fact the movie is shot entirely from his perspective to give the viewers a little taste of his confused inner psychological battle. 'I wanted to appeal to the spectator's memory and sensation, where intrigue, fear and anxiety get together', she continued. 'I tried to place the viewer in the same state as Vincent. He is imagining things out of nothing and his imagination has almost no limit. Beyond Vincent's trauma, Vincent is a reminder of our own anxiety in the face of reality. Like an animal, he watches his environment as if everything could be unsafe, he collects information on his surroundings, whilst always knowing that reality is not what he actually perceives.'

Of course, the twist in this story is that Vincent's paranoia isn't necessarily deceiving him, because there might be real danger lurking within his employers' Maryland villa. In that respect, it opens up a whole new complexity in how to cope with PTSD when your irrational suspicions are occasionally proved right.

'Disorder' is released on March 25th 2016.