Long before the cheap and talentless horrific films we are offered today, there were very good found footages: Cannibal Holocaust, which scared the world in the 80’s and forced the director to prove that the actors were still alive, and Man Bites Dog, a cult UFO that propelled Benoît Poelvoorde. Coming from the lands of Belgium, Rémy Belvaux’s experimental film, originally launched as a student film, introduces us to Benoît, a sympathetic and philosophical serial killer, who is accompanied by a film crew making a documentary about him, his job, and his daily life.
A crazy and original subject which alone deserves a detour… Shot in black and white and composed of sequences each more crazy than the next, Man Bites Dog takes us into the daily life of a killer who is sometimes methodical, sometimes gruff, a guy who can go from laughter to tears in the blink of an eye, who doesn’t hesitate to kill a whole family before going out for a drink.
A simple guy who explains how he proceeds to eliminate ordinary people. A sick man. But an endearing sicko, very comfortable in front of the camera, who is as friendly as a pig with a film crew gradually destabilized by this strange being. And the more the massacre goes on, the more some of them feel uncomfortable, except for the director, who is progressively subjugated by the odious character.
The spectator is in turn both hypnotized by Benoît Pooelvoorde, at the top of his talent and then gradually disgusted by his terrible but seemingly natural and often hilarious actions, as evidenced by the “unarmed” murder of a lonely granny, that of a black night watchman or the atrocious rape of a good woman in front of the eyes of a husband horrified to see how normal it can seem for the serial killer. Filled with a biting and subtle black humor, C’est arrivé près de chez vous is a work of its own, a quasi-unique film that respects its subject and especially its concept (the fake documentary) to never stray from it and propose with it a most intoxicating tourist stroll.
It is not a film to put in all the hands and to advise against the sensitive souls. This film is a summit of black humor . Many passages have become cult like the lesson to weight the bodies, the game of little Gregory or the theories on urbanism … In fact it is a succession of scenes and hallucinating dialogues which question us on the violence of our society.
