From Belgium, Karim Ouelhaj’s Megalomaniac finds inspiration in the Butcher of Mons — a real-life, never-found serial killer of five women in the mid-1990s — then toys with it fictionally. The film asks, if the Butcher had kids back then, what would his now-adult children be up to? Results are, duh, disturbing — and equally well-acted.
With their evil father deceased, siblings Martha (Eline Schumacher, Krump) and Félix (Benjamin Ramon, Yummy) live in a dingy mansion as grim as the film it calls home; the abode looks like prison of sorts from the inside. While the manipulative Felix has picked up Dad’s felonious hobby, the emotionally damaged Martha toils as a factory janitor. And we do mean toils, as she’s repeatedly bullied and raped by co-workers.
Perhaps due to its less lenient European origins, Megalomaniac is uncompromising. At first, Ouelhaj (Parabola) makes us pity Martha. Then, step by step, as he slowly reveals how horrible a monster she actually is, we realize he’s slyly manipulating us into wanting to see her exact the most gruesome revenge on her attackers. And we do. Even that doesn’t quite go as planned, unless your definition of “planned” begins and ends with “blood-drenched.”
Although vile and violent, Megalomaniac holds another aspect arguably more of an obstacle to mainstream audiences: the occasional, unexplained touch of the surreal, à la David Lynch. Don’t let Ouelhaj’s arthouse inclinations scare you from this desolate study of what passes for family these days, even if he wields his film’s allegories with the weight of sledgehammer. —Rod Lott