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.
