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

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In a village in the mountains of Slovakia, superstition long resides. It seems to live everywhere. This, Šarlota knows, having been on the receiving end for much of her life. The scorn started when, as a child, Šarlota accidentally knocked her little sister off a cliff and, ashamed, fled for the city.

Two decades later, called to accept an inheritance from her mother, Šarlota (Natalia Germani, The Devil Conspiracy) returns, only to find everyone in town thinks she’s a witch. (Even if they didn’t, odds are she’d be persecuted anyway, just for her gender.)

Are they superstitious because they fear “the other”? Nightsiren seems to suggest as much. Then it goes one better by pointing back at the accusers, suggesting these monsters we live with are more worthy of blame. Šarlota and Mira (newcomer Eva Mores), the young woman who befriends her, learn this lesson over and over again. Both actresses, it’s worth nothing, inhabit their parts really well.

From Filthy filmmaker Tereza Nvotová, Nightsiren has a lot on its mind, little of which it keeps to itself, even if could loosen its grip on subtlety. Although its feminist themes might scare some potential viewers off, that’s their loss; this is folk horror through and through, what with such elements as scythes, snakes, goats and rituals involving flames.

Like all good folktales, it’s presented in chapters. The literary touch of Nvotová and co-writer Barbora Namerova is palpable, but that hardly means visuals go ignored. On the contrary, Nightsiren pulls off some stunners, most notably as Šarlota experiences a DayGlo-painted nightmare of a forest orgy. —Rod Lott

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