Megalomaniac

I read a review which compared this film to the Canadian version of Martyrs and so I took a shot at it.

I gave Martyrs a 9/10 and it is my #1 horror movie of all time. Megalomaniac does not come close. I was bored throughout the silliness of the story and the lack of clarity with flashbacks that made no sense to this viewer.

Felix and his sister Martha are the offspring of a notorious serial killer and the siblings carry on in the family tradition. Felix abducts women and murders them and then leaves them at the side of the road. His sister lives with him in their gothic house and works at a factory where she is harassed by her co-workers.

A social worker pays monthly visits to the home for unexplained reasons while a young woman is chained to a wall in a nearby room.

The ending is a bloody mess and I do not recommend this film.

Man, I did not expect this movie to be so BRUTAL! A lot more art-house and slow when compared to movies of its ilk, but I have been clamoring for another film along the same lines as Martyrs or Frontier(s), and this film really delivers. I haven't seen a movie go for this style in so long, I was worried that directors had given up on the sub-genre for good. I'm happy to say that this movie would be at home with the likes of the more disturbing ones.

Everything works so well in this film, from the directorial style to the acting to the gorgeous cinematography, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this film is SLOW and extremely deliberate. While the few scenes of actual violence are beyond disturbing (with one scene so shocking I didn't even know how it got past the ratings board), but the rest of the film was a dreary, depressing familial drama(?), although that wouldn't be the appropriate label for a film about a pair of siblings who are taking after their father, a vicious serial killer. There was just so many scenes of this brooding woman, allowing life to beat her down, and when her brother finally got to work, it happens quickly, and then we are back to scenes of her moping around, looking crestfallen and despondent. I understand why this was done in the context of this style of film, but it's a real drag when you get that rush of brutality to only come back down to so many scenes of mediocrity.

If you're a fan of movies like Martyrs, Inside, High Tension, ect. This movie will be right up your alley. It's extremely and deliberately slow, but stick with it. The pay off may be worth it, depending on how patient you are.

Wow. This movie is definitely not for everyone, but it is for me. Well acted, beautifully shot, and I could really feel what she was feeling. Looking at them both, I can understand how they got where they were in life, and partly, it shows nature and nurture coming together. I did not find it in anyway pointless or the violence glorified. More like a character study. No matter how much she tried, everything and everyone was against her so ultimately she found herself beside the rest of her family. I feel that the last 5 seconds of the film are quite symbolic.

If you like films that delve deep into the darkest depths of the human soul, don't mind a slow pace (which I think is deliberate) graphic violence, and are not adverse to a story that is utterly bleak, then give it a watch!

Urgh. This year's seeking profundity by brutalising young women effort.

Clearly talent in front and behind the camera, all completely wasted on a tick box exercise in outrage - the aforementioned misogynist violence (and some of it is indefensible), rape, incest, auto cannibalism and so on and so forth.

Striving for the heights of Kieslowski or Haneke and falling down because everything it does has been done before and can only be that shocking once or twice but here we are 20 years later with people attempting to pull the wool with the same old shtick.

I didn't hate it but it profoundly bored me.

Beautiful surreal imagery, gruesome violence and dark atmosphere dominate the first and last ~5 minutes of the film.

I will not go into detail as to what happens inbetween but it would make your skin crawl in a different movie. Here, it is neither staged in gruesome detail nor cleverly implied, nor is the protagonist's emotional reaction to her mistreatment of particular interest to the film maker. The normalcy of it all and her overall numbness could in themselves be horrifying, but a thin plot about human pets, off-screen mass-murder and familial conflict keeps us from really getting to know Martha.

For the most part this was a disappointment and yet my interest in the work of Karim Ouelhaj is piqued. Those few minutes of genius bookending the film speak to a strong personal sense of style, the mark of a horror auteur.

On an overwhelmingly positive note: the noisy industrial soundtrack, especially the piece that plays during the end credits, is excellent. I do hope Karim embraces his more poetic tendencies and collaborates with Gary Moonboots on another film.