Alias (2002)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Excellent but underrated film

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

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.

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.

I cannot imagine seeing a more stupid movie this year. This is absolute crap. I like the director though and he has made some okay movies like Team Spirit and Alles Moet Weg, but I have no idea why he wanted to make this. So yes, it is the first Belgian thriller ever. It is also the first Belgian entry for next year's rasberry awards. The acting is okay, the scenery as well (hey, it shows great views over Ghent in the beginning of the movie), but the story is just so ridiculous and unbelievable... The special effects (well, when they start killing people) is so unprofessionally done, it's a laugh. Jan Verheyen presents cult movies on friday nights at one of the Flemish television channels (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cannibal Holocaust, etc...) and makes compilations of the most stupid scenes in movie history... The chances of Alias becoming cult are small, but I guess it won't be long before we will see bits of this movie in one of his compilations.

This is one of the greatest flemish films ever created ! People who doesn't like flemish films have to see this one, it's really something else and it is better. Well done Jan !