Alias

My beloved Belgium country never was a great cinema-nation, but there certainly are directors here with vision, talent and ambition. Jan Verheyen is one of them! He's a real film-buff with a passion for vicious horror movies and rare cult gems. With 'Alias', it feels like he finally had the opportunity to do what he really wanted to do. It is, in fact, one giant homage to the style of film-making he loves so much. Alias is a nearly authentic giallo! The plot is nonsense, the characters are deranged and the climax is exaggeratedly gore. What few people realize, however, is that it's MEANT to be like this! Gialli (originally these were extremely violent and explicit Italian film-noirs / murder mystery films) aren't about logic or credibility…they're about experimenting with themes and adding as many twists 'n turns as possible in order to fool the audience. Verheyen approaches the subgenre like a real pro. To the already quite demented plot, he adds perverted undertones like voyeurism even a variant on the Oedipus theme. The plot involves two women who, during a daytrip in Ghent, coincidentally videotape the suicide of a young girl. Well…it appears to be suicide but closer analysis of the tape proves that the girl was murdered instead. And it looks like the handsome man they met the same day knows more about it. The girls' private investigation leads all the way to a hidden mental asylum carrying many secrets…

Personally, I think this is great stuff. Verheyen focuses on the strength of the genre (the visual flair) as well as the weaknesses (plot, dialogues…). The opinions on this film were very divergent. Since it contains a lot more violence and sleaze than the average Belgian film, it received some negative criticism. I can easily imagine why people didn't like the vulgarity of the screenplay but that's mostly because they're not familiar with the rich horror genre Alias brings tribute to.

If you compare the Belgian and more in particular the Flemish cinema with the French and other European cinema, than you'll see there is a big difference. In the other countries they are much more chauvinistic when it comes to their own movies. Especially in France many people will watch "their" movies rather than Hollywood productions. But perhaps there is also another reason for it. It may also be because in our country they just don't make many movies and when a movie is actually made, most of the time its quality isn't really stunning.

The directors say that they can't help it. They don't have the money to produce a movie like they do in Hollywood. True, most of the movies they have to finance themselves, because the government doesn't give them many subsidies. But don't tell me that money is the only problem. Next to financial problems we also have a lack of talented directors who are able to put our little country on the map of big cinematic countries. I'm afraid Jan Verheyen won't fill up that gap. I'm not saying he's a bad director, he just isn't great as he proves with this movie. It has a cheap and amateurish feeling about it.

The actors didn't do too bad most of the time (except for Hilde Van Mieghem who is so incredibly fake and unnatural that it all becomes laughable), but the script is far from original. It feels like a script that no-one in Hollywood wanted, so Verheyen took it and filmed it over here instead of in America. Too often you can see that the director is a great amateur of cheap horror movies. He uses the same kind of scenes and ideas, which doesn't really do any good to the movie.

I'm not really surprised not many people actually saw this movie. It's worth a watch, but don't expect too much of it. I give it a 6/10. Not bad for one of ours, but just not good enough

In the pleasant city of Ghent, in Belgium, the girl-friends Eva (Hilde De Baerdemaeker) and Patti (Veerle Dobbelaere) videotape the robbery of a car first and later the suicide of a hooker. When Eva's camera is stolen by the thieves, Dieter (Geert Hunaerts) retrieves it , returns the camera to Eva and has an affair with her. Meanwhile, Patti decides to investigate the tape and finds a dark secret about the incident and Dieter.

"Alias" is a good European thriller, filmed in the beautiful city of Ghent. The first half part of the story is very promising and original, but unfortunately the conclusion falls in the usual clichés of horror movies. The unknown actresses of this movie are extremely beautiful and charming, have great performances and are another attraction. I particularly loved the performance and beauty of Hilde De Baerdemaeker, and I hope to have the chance to see her again in other movies. I expect also to have the chance of one day visit this lovely city of Ghent, which seems to be wonderful. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Alias – Relações de Sangue" "("Alias – Blood Relations")

"De Alias" is Belgium's first true high-profile exploitation movie. You might not guess it by the looks of the poster, and even the trailer merely suggest a slick thriller, but nothing could be further from the truth. Director Jan Verheyen artfully combines a romantic encounter with some pretty twisted twists.

"De Alias" gets off to a tense start, when a man is being dragged from his isolation-cell in some loony-bin, is being put in a car, smacked in the face and driven off a cliff. The police barely has a clue what might have happened, so the case is quickly closed.

Flash-forward to the city of Ghent, where two girls (newcomer Hilde De Baerdemaker and Veerle Dobbelaere) by accident film the apparent suicide of a beautiful young girl, who jumps naked out of a forth-story window. A little later, the girls are nearly robbed of their camcorder, if it hadn't been for a mysterious stranger (Geert Hunaerts), who beats up the thugs and returns the camera. Eva, one of the girls, is immediately smitten with the hero, and decides to go for a drink with him. But little does she know that the stranger may, or may not have anything to do with the girl's suicide earlier on ...

When reading this, you might think that this looks like the outline for yet another predictable thriller. Wrong! Screenwriters Verheyen, Dirickx and Koeck have made considerable effort to create a twisty, yet believable story, that goes pretty far, without losing it's credibility. The first half of the film moves along smoothly while introducing the characters, raising the tension and revealing the true identity of the mysterious stranger. But it's only in the second half of the film that the plot takes a turn for the worst and the pace really picks up. The viewer is being thrown from one revelation into the next, while the protagonists are dropping like flies. Voyeurism, sex, violence, incest ... you name it, "De Alias" has it all, and still manages to be neither gratuitous nor tasteless. Director Jan Verheyen is obviously very fond of the '70s trash-cinema and enthusiastically recycles those themes into a truly exciting and gripping film. Some films he may or may not be paying direct homage to are "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", "Psycho" and "Se7en". Just look at one of the final scenes, where the protagonist is invited to a macabre dinner-party, or the scene where the killer's father is reloading his gun, while his terrified victim has to watch him. Truly cinema at it's weirdest.

Despite all these merits, the film does have a couple of flaws, not in the least the terrible performance by Veerle Dobbelaere. She simply isn't up to par. For some reason she doesn't look the part and has difficulty making her character believable. On the other hand, the performances by Hilde De Baerdemaker and especially Geert Hunaerts, are excellent. The direction and photography are exceptionally good (especially for a Flemish film), the music is appropriate and for once the dialogue isn't predictable and idiotic.

In short: like Verheyen's previous film "Team Spirit", "De Alias" is one of those rare Flemish films that succeeds in being different, without forgetting to be good. If you enjoy a weird film, you might like this one. (7.5/10)

Verheyen, the director of this much discussed thriller, is an avid fan of B-horror/thrillers films. If you're not down with that and you haven't seen for example Italian cults like the Argento films, I understand that this film is pretty strangely build up. Also in ALIAS nothing really exciting seems to happen at first sight. It's the last part of the film where Verheyen suddenly changes course and shows us some really sick characters and bloody situations and then you realize (or you should realize) that all the small situations the personalities have encountered led to a finale so in-your-face for a Dutch public. ALIAS has a strong Argento touch in the psychology and story telling (e.g. Terror at the Opera). I liked it.