Borgman reminds me of a movie I kind of liked. But it also reminds me of a movie I hated.
The flick I liked was the recent Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien who uses sex to lure men to their doom. The flick I hated was 2007’s Funny Games, in which two creeps take over an upper-middle-class household and begin treating the family in a most sadistic manner.
Borgman has eccentricities all its own, but it contains elements of both films. Like Under the Skin, it’s about a mysterious figure whose malevolent actions are never quite explained. And as in Funny Games, the individual’s target is a well-to-do family.
Written and directed by Alex van Warmerdam (Voyeur), the subtitled Dutch film begins with a scene that sets the off-kilter tone: A priest leads a Communion ceremony, then grabs a shotgun and leads a small posse into the woods. There they locate and attack the underground bunker of a grizzled man who goes by the name of Camiel Borgman (Jan Bijvoet).