Megalomaniac, 2022.
Directed by Karim Ouelhaj.
Starring Eline Schumacher, Benjamin Ramon, Hélène Moor, Wim Willaert, and Pierre Nisse.
SYNOPSIS:
The sibling children of a serial killer seem to have inherited their father’s madness.
Time is circular, and you can be sure that fashions and trends once deemed cutting edge and exciting will have their time again, albeit with the sharp edges blunted just a little and the tag ‘retro’ applied for added kitsch value.
With that in mind, Megalomaniac is a horror movie from Belgium that has its roots firmly in the French new wave of extremity that flourished in the 2000s, a brutal sub-genre that spawned masterpieces like Martyrs and Inside, was ripped from its European womb by Hollywood and bastardised for mass consumption, with the likes of Hostel and The Devil’s Rejects taking the heightened levels of gore and violence and applying it to America’s own historical fears. Inevitably, it all came to a head with The Human Centipede and its immediate sequel providing the peak of extreme bad taste before the sub-genre fell off the radar and CGI-heavy supernatural /psychological horror became the sub-genre of mainstream approval for a while.
And although torture porn (as it came to be known) still popped up now and then, it has become a sort of novelty, an example being the inexplicable popularity of 2022s Terrifier 2, a two-hour-plus extreme slasher sequel to a movie that got little-to-no mainstream coverage in amongst all of the slow-burning metaphors for grief that the mainstream face of the genre has become in recent years. With Megalomanic, director Karim Ouelhaj uses the golden era of the 2000s and its style as a reference – a starting point, if you will – but takes the material seriously; yes, there is extreme violence here, but nobody is laughing.
The Butcher of Mons was a real-life serial killer who was never caught, his ‘thing’ being to dump bin bags full of dismembered female body parts by the roadside. Megalomaniac suggests that the killer may have had two children – Félix (Benjamin Ramon) and Martha (Eline Schumacher) – and then goes on to play with the idea of said offspring continuing not only the bloodline but also the madness that comes with it.
After witnessing the birth of his sister Martha at the hands of his father – the mother may or may not be his – Félix grows up following in his father’s footsteps by brutally murdering random women and leaving their remains for the authorities to find, whilst Martha has a job as a cleaner in a factory where she is regularly abused – verbally, physically and sexually – by a few members of staff, causing her mental state to decline, with both her and her brother having visions of her demonic father and his victims. Then she discovers she is pregnant…
Nailing graphic violence to an arthouse aesthetic, Karim Ouelhaj uses his camera to great effect, not lingering on the carnage as many other filmmakers would do but rather use it to capture the emotional weight of what is happening onscreen by closing in on his characters. In one scene, Félix brutally stabs at a frantic victim he has pinned to the ground, the movement of the knife and the splashes of blood on his face creating the image of murder whilst not showing all the gory details. However, you do get very small flashes of what is happening away from his face, and it fills in all the gaps without shoving the audiences’ noses right down into the entrails (which is what Félix actually does).
But Félix is not the main focus of attention here, despite his overbearing nature that dictates he control everything, as Martha is the one we spend most of our time with. Despite not being a murderer like her brother, her life is an unending spiral of misery as the movie attempts to address her situation and how the men in her life – her father, her brother (who she has sexual desires for) and her abusive colleagues – control every aspect of it. Her story is one of tragedy, and although she is not completely innocent – she does have another woman chained up as a pet – Eline Schumacher’s performance is magnetic, drawing you in to Martha’s plight and wanting her to get her revenge before the inevitable bloodbath that makes up the climax of the movie.
Bold, brutal and beautiful in its grotesqueness, Megalomaniac is quite clearly not going to be for everyone, for not only is it likely too graphically violent and bloody for casual viewers but the more artistic flurries that Karim Ouelhaj employs to create the dichotomy of almost gothic splendour and primitive savagery might be a little too ‘arty’ for the hardcore horror crowd, especially when it comes to the pacing as this is a movie that takes its time to set up its special moments (but when they hit it is worth it).
As a piece of art, Megalomaniac is a step towards making horror more visually disturbing again and its defiant grimness a reminder that happy endings are not always the most satisfying ones. However, as a movie – to put on for entertainment – it falls short of being one to reach for when you want to have a bloody good time, which is pretty much how it was in the extreme sub-genre 20 years ago so perhaps now is the right time for a resurgence. Time will tell.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
Originally published September 8, 2023. Updated September 10, 2023.
