The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The story of the true-life killers Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, most famously adapted into The Honeymoon Killers, gets a retelling from Fabrice du Welz with a modern updating
An exquisitely directed homage to giallo cinema – a fascinating work that has been stripped of almost all dialogue that takes place on a purely visual level of sensation and body movement
French-Belgian adult animated film in the gonzo trippy vein of Ralph Bakshi and Bill Plympton – a visually madcap satire of science-fiction tropes and 1980s East-West tensions, full of wackily surreal visuals
A wickedly irreverent and even occasionally blasphemous comedy in which God is a scruffy, bad-tempered man living in Brussels who spends all his time devising ways to make humans miserable
One of several Elizabeth Bathory films that came out at the same time, this has gained a cult reputation. Delphine Seyrig gives a marvellously arch performance, while director Harry Kumel films with a gorgeous and dreamy colour palette
Entirely charming French animated film from the directors of A Town Called Panic. This is a children’s film that comes with a beautiful simplicity, a duo of winning characters and some side-splitting visual gags
Entirely charming film about a woman who claims to be a fairy. In the best tradition of Jacques Tati, this consists of a series of deliriously nonsensical sight gags that become an utter delight
Solidly effective Belgian film about a woman fleeing through the woods from a killer who wants to make snuff movies. One of several films about people hunted in the woods to come out around the same time
The title leads you to expect a variation on Jack the Giant Slayer but instead we get a very good story about a troubled girl who believes in giants. Very similar to A Monster Calls, this is carried by a fantastic performance from 15 year old Madison Wolfe
A Belgian film about a girl who moves in with her boyfriend only to uncover sinister secrets in the basement as she investigates the disappearance of the previous tenant
An exquisitely arty work from Harry Kumel where a young man who is drawn into a large rambling mansion to find that its residents are the Greek gods
Produced not long after the success of Young Frankenstein, a Belgian-made parody of the vampire film that falls into excruciating slapstick. Louise Fletcher is absurdly miscast as Countess Dracula
One of the very first Found Footage films, an hilarious Belgian-made black comedy with Benoit Poelvoorde as a cheerful serial killer who demonstrates his techniques to a film crew
Hilariously adult and filthy minded retelling of the Marquis de Sade story using puppets. Quills crossbred with Meet the Feebles if you like.
Jaco Van Dormael film that reaches for epic ideas in a story about multiple life pathways and a babble of ideas taken from physics but fails to assemble them in a way that makes much sense
A Belgian-made venture into Backwoods Brutality territory that keeps heading into stranger and more disturbing places until it almost seems to be taking place on another planet altogether
Studio Ghibli’s first ever international co-production. A desert island castaway fantasy, this makes interesting comparison to the recent Robinson Crusoe/The Wild Life, even if both films are poles apart in style. This is dialogueless, spare and contained with a minimalism of plot and drama
An extraordinarily stylised homage to the 1960s spy movie, which strips everything down to a series of provocative, stylised high-end fashion poses. The visuals in the film are quite extraordinary
Robinson Crusoe is a classic adventure story about a man shipwrecked on a desert island. It has no fantastic content but this is a bizarre animated version where Crusoe is aided by the talking animals that inhabits the island amid much slapstick shenanigans
Belgian-made black comedy where a filmmaker frustrated with trying to raise funding starts shooting producers and filming the result
Animated film based on the original Belgian Smurfs comics made prior to the hit of the Hanna-Barbera series.
The title is misleading as this features no Bigfeet but is an animated film about a family that sprouts all-over body hair and big feet. This quickly falls into the usual formulaic inanities of the modern animated film
Intended as a homage to giallo cinema, this strips everything else away until the film exists as only a series of fragmentary images and sensations designs to provoke and tease
Animated parody of the Tarzan films made with a very adult sense of humour that was banned in several countries as a result
Extraordinary Belgian fabulist film, part-animated, part live-action, that takes place in a surreal alternate world
Belgian film shot in the first person about an extreme agoraphobic who seeks to cultivate relationships with other people online
The second in a duo of live-action French-language adaptations of Herge’s famous comic-book character, which gets the resemblance to the characters almost perfect
Animated adaptation of the Tintin character that gets the look and details of the characters just right but is ruined by bad dubbing of some of the voice parts and allowing a slapstick element to take over
Film made entirely with stop-motion animated plastic toys and with a sublimely nonsensical absurdiism that has more hilarity and creativity than most mainstream animated fare you will see all year
Belgian zombie film about a military unit assigned to travel through zombie-infested territory to rescue a girl who has an immunity
The police procedural has vanished from cinema screens this side of the 00s, although this is one Belgian example. This ventures into some very dark territory in its story of a detective who ventures into underground paedophile rings in search of a child-abducting serial killer
The second film from Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz is an intensely haunted albeit enigmatic journey into Southeast Asian jungles in search of a missing child
Film made to celebrate the millennium where a totalitarian government creates a wall that divides Belgium along linguistic lines
Belgian Backwoods Brutality effort concerning a boy scout troupe who run afoul of a mysterious feral child and hunter in the woods near their campsite. Defying many of the expectation of the genre, this provides a series of often unearthly images
Belgian film that starts out as a blackly funny work about a cut-price East European hospital before seguing into a zombie film