Movies
‘Megalomaniac’ Review – Extreme Horror Makes for an Unsettling Conversation Starter [Fantasia]
The Butcher of Mons was a moniker given to a notorious serial killer in Mons, Belgium, who left bags of dismembered women along visible roadsides. As heinously and abruptly as these discoveries began, they ceased in 1997, and the Mons Butcher’s identity remains unknown today. Megalomaniac supposes the atrocious serial killer had offspring that carried on his heritage. It yields extremism, confrontational horror that aims to offend as much as it does evoke wrath, and societal reflection. It’s at once compelling and uncomfortable to watch.
Megalomaniac opens with a birthing scene that, at first, could be mistaken for a violent torture scene. A blood-drenched woman screams in fury and pain, her eyes blood red from the strain, while the Butcher and his older child await their new family member. Cut to the present, where adult siblings Martha (Eline Schumacher) and Felix (Benjamin Ramon) live alone in the spacious yet crumbling Gothic manor. Felix dedicates himself wholly to following his father’s footsteps, modus operandi and all, while the timid Martha works nights as a janitor at a factory. Their unconventional way of life seems to unravel once Martha suffers a series of grotesque assaults at work.
Writer/Director Karim Ouelhaj blends nihilistic, extreme horror with an arthouse psychological descent to capture the unraveling of Martha. From the outset, Martha is established as browbeaten, devoid of self-esteem, and eager for love and stability. She’s subservient to her more dominant brother, nearly mute at work, and plagued by vivid nightmares of demonic figures. Many that bleed over into her waking life. Constant torment by factory workers Luc (Pierre Nisse), L’ouvrier (Quentin Lasbazeilles), and a guilty by passiveness Jerome (Wim Willaert) tips Martha’s precarious grip on reality.
Ouelhaj lingers on the faces of the perpetrators, victim, and the complicit in Martha’s brutal assaults, captured in near silence to draw out the visceral discomfort. Instead of turning straight to revenge, Martha seeks solace in the concept of family, leading to a vastly different and grotesque means of achieving it. It’s a character study of a woman born and raised by a serial killer that targeted women and how it distorts her.
Martha’s story is shot like a Baroque painting, with sharp contrasts of light and pitch-black shadows. Martha’s inner demons are lurking within, and an increasing sense that perceptions aren’t what they seem. François Schmitt’s foreboding yet beguiling Gothic cinematography and muted palettes in conjunction with Gary Moonboots and Simon Fransquet‘s primal score lend a dreamlike aesthetic to the boundary-pushing, hyper-violent horror.
It helps mute the gruesomeness that evokes sympathy for a character prone to condemnable actions. Schumacher’s portrayal of Martha is remarkable; the deft shifts in personality keep you guessing while drawing you into her orbit. The lines of morality blur as prey transforms into predator. The more unhinged its characters become, the more nightmarish fantasy creeps in until a Grand Guignol finale with no easy answers.
Megalomaniac is a conversation starter. Ouelhaj doesn’t handhold and leaves much of Martha’s story up for interpretation. It’s aggressive and unrelenting in its torture, both Martha and the film’s many victims. Morality exists in a grey space, eliciting sympathy for an otherwise repulsive beast; even the title is a starting point of examination. Ouelhaj uses Martha’s world as a provocative means of criticizing the patriarchy and frames a fictional story around a true unsolved crime as an intentional affront. It keeps its audience at perhaps too much distance and it’s a bit too dense in its introspections, but it makes for an intense, unsettling journey for those willing to wade into the murky depths of taste.
Megalomaniac made its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival and is currently awaiting distribution.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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