Rating: D+
Dir: Jacques Kluger
Star: Charley Palmer Rothwell, Roxane Mesquida, Marie Zabukovec, Thomas Mustin
Most of the countries in this second set are ones which don’t have much of a footprint in the horror genre. This has been both a good and a bad thing, it has been nice in that we’ve gone outside our comfort zone, but we have been left with some selections which are fringe horror, due to the paucity of available selections. That doesn’t apply to Belgium, which probably would have been a candidate first time round, but appears to have fallen through the cracks. They have a long track record, worthy of respect. Personally, my fondness for the country probably goes back to 1989, when I saw both Crazy Love and Rabid Grannies, representing two extremes of the horror genre – the thoughtful and the outrageously dumb.
The country has consistently delivered interesting work both before and since that pairing. My all-time favourite Belgian horror dates further back, being 1971’s Daughters of Darkness, reviewed during last year’s 31 Days of Vampires feature, and one of the best vampire films ever made in my opinion. Coming more up to date, the country has given us one of the most memorable mockumentaries ever made too, in Man Bites Dog, where a camera crew follow a serial killer on his work. There’s also critical darling (I was less impressed, personally) Raw, which introduced us to the warped mind of Julia Ducournau. Or if you want controversial, there’s Lucker the Necrophagus, whose producer reputedly destroyed the negatives after shooting was completed.
The oldest Belgian horror feature film I could locate, is over a hundred years old, being 1923’s La nuit rouge. Information about this is sparse in the extreme, and it appears likely to be a lost film. The IMDb has an anonymous synopsis, though I can’t vouch for its accuracy. It begins at the old castle belonging to Madam Lesparre, whose daughter Ginette has just married Robert. After the newlyweds leave on honeymoon, the car breaks down and they are forced to seek refuge in a nearby building with the ominous name Moulin-Maudit (Cursed Mill), “where untold horrors wait.” Sounds oddly like a Belgian precursor to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, if you ask me.
There is a rather good documentary on the topic of Flemish horror, Forgotten Scares, which is certainly worth a look if you are interested in the country’s output, from Daughters of Darkness on. Here’s its trailer, It includes interviews with multiple influential Belgian film-makers, from Harry Kumel to Johan Vandewoestijne, and a common thread appears to be how difficult it is to make horror films locally, with financing near-impossible to obtain. Whatever films are made, tend to be more successful outside their home country. It’s likely for commercial reasons why things like Darkness and Grannies were made in English. That’s a trend which continues for this selection, with a British lead – the son of Eastenders‘ Patsy Palmer, actually.
Unfortunately, it’s not very good. When I saw this had a Letterboxd score of just 1.8, it seemed harsh: you have to really try on that site to get a rating below two, and 1.8 is perilously close to “Worst 250 All-time” territory. I would put it that low. But I’ll likely end up either *½ or ** on my profile, so I can’t really argue. It’s almost entirely down to scripting problems, with a story that always feels like it’s on thin ice, in terms of plausibility and logic. Then, at the end, it tries to deliver a twist which fails to stick the landing in the slightest. In fact, if I may extend the gymnastics metaphor (the Olympics are on, at time of writing), it crashes off the mat, ploughs into nearby spectators and bursts into flames. Which would be unusual for a gymnast, certainly.
The central character is Lucas (Rothwell), an obsessive games player who went out with another gamer, Chloé (Mesquida), before they split up. She gets back in contact with him, asking if he’s interested in joining her to play an “escape room”-type game called Paranoia, which offers a prize of one million euros to the team of two who are first to complete it. After solving puzzles which get them entrance, they arrive at the abandoned hospital where Paranoia takes place, and meet the other pairings. However, it’s not long before Lucas and Chloé discovers these rooms are potentially far more lethal than anticipated. Never mind a million euros, simply leaving with a pulse feels increasingly like it would be a major win for the couple.
On the one hand, this is certainly a professional production, which looks and sounds solid enough. The individual escape rooms are okay too, with some thought put into the conundrums and their execution (sometimes, in the literal sense). This was based on a novel, Puzzle, by Franck Thilliez (who also wrote the book which inspired Room of Death), and I wonder how much of these was taken wholesale from the book. Rothwell, weirdly, is really good at depicting pain. There are two sequences – one where he’s having electric shocks inflicted on him (above), the other where teeth are being yanked out with pliers – that are genuinely hard to watch, he’s selling the situation so hard. And that ends the good news for this review.
For Mesquida is terrible, barely intelligible half the time. Kluger – who appears to have precisely zero credits of any kind before directing this – demonstrates no awareness of how to generate tension, even when Chloé is strapped to a bed, under a descending array of knives (top). But, as mentioned, the main problem is a script which is clearly taking inspiration from Saw, without bothering about trivial concepts like logic and sense. This is particularly true at the end, where the identity of the evil, unseen genius behind it all is revealed. All I have to say is, “Where does he get those wonderful toys?” Well, I could say more, but as my mother always told me, “If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all.” In that spirit…
This review is part of our October 2024 feature, 31 More Countries of Horror.