Technically, the Dutch thriller Borgman is a horror film, but it’s horror for adults, without the gore and with lots of wit. The shock doesn’t come from monsters unexpectedly lurching out of nowhere. The entertainment comes from the OMG moments of the “don’t ask the weird guy into your house!” and “don’t let the sinister guys watch your kids!” variety.
The setting is the architecturally striking and well-tended home of an affluent Dutch family and their Danish nanny. The husband is an aggro corporate schemer who is a real scumbag – selfish, racist and chauvinistic, with the capacity for a violent rage. His wife Marina is repressed and neurotic. But they are highly functional until a homeless guy, Camiel Borgman, happens by and circumstances compel them to put him up. Borgman feels entitled to more and more outrageous impositions – and soon it’s apparent that he’s even more sinister than he is obnoxious.
What if Charles Manson wasn’t a drug addled hoodlum and instead used his deranged charisma with remarkable skill? Borgman leads a crew of normal looking but murderous henchmen, who operate with the ruthless efficiency of Navy Seals. (Watch for the scar near the younger woman’s shoulder-blade.) Vaguely gifted with mind control, he can apparently create dreams by squatting naked gargoyle-like above Marina while she slumbers with her husband. There is violence aplenty, but it tends to come through a bonk on the head or some poison in a glass.
Dark comedy stems from the matter-of-factness of the murders and body disposal (as in tossing corpses into a lake and then diving in for a relaxing swim). Every once in a while, there’s a hilariously sinister moment, like the supremely random appearance of some whippets that seem more like hellhounds.
The acting is uniformly excellent, including the kids, but Jan Bijvoet as Borgman and Hadewych Minis as Marina are stellar.
Some questions are never answered (who are those three guys at the beginning and why are they hunting the homeless guys?). Is this a cult or aliens or what? The audience needs to accept some ambiguity. But the overall story arc is clear – no good is going to come of these people once they meet Camiel Borgman and his friends.
There is a subtext here: is this family so bourgeois that it deserves its fate? Fortunately, this subtext isn’t as in-your-face as in some recent self-loathing Eurocrap like Happy Days or Finsterworld, so it’s not at all off-putting. But Borgman can be enjoyed without going there at all.
Borgman is superbly written and directed by Alex van Warmerdam, a 62-year-old Dutch actor with only a handful of writing and directing credits.
I don’t often recommend a horror movie, but I’m all in on Borgman. Take it from me – you haven’t seen this movie before, and it’s endlessly entertaining. Borgman is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.