Ten must-see films at the Razor Reel Film Festival

This week marks the beginning of the Razor Reel Flanders Film Festival in Bruges, Belgium.

I've made a selection of the must-see movies of this fun event for you. Titles with a * are films I've already seen and loved.

Thelma

Thelma isn’t an ordinary girl. She has no friends and has no idea how friendship works. When she meets a fellow student named Anja, it is love at first sight for both of them. Thelma, however, is too confused to react, and her sexual repression begins to express itself in telekinetic powers with disastrous results.

Thelma won several awards at the Sitges Film Festival 2017, including the Silver Meliès for Best Feature-Length Film.

78/52

This documentary dissecting the 52 shots of the iconic shower scene from Psycho features many well-known names from the movie industry, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Elijah Wood, Mick Garris, Peter Bogdanovich, Danny Elfman, Guillermo del Torro, Martin Scorsese, Neil Marshall, and more.

Forgotten Scares *

When Jonas Govaerts' Welp was announced as the first Flemish horror title ever, Belgian horror aficionados wondered what happened to the rich genre history in Flanders. Steve De Roover (the director of Un Homme Bien and one of the contributors to When Animals Attack: The 70 Best Horror Movies with Killer Animals) tells you all you need to know about the Flemish horror scene in this fun and fascinating documentary.

Habit

Michael finds a job as a doorman in a massage parlor. After witnessing a brutal murder, he is drawn into a dark world which he finds irresistibly attractive. From the director of the chilling thrillers Splinter and The Blood Lands.

Lowlife *

Almost everyone at Etrange Festival hailed Lowlife as the new Pulp Fiction. It's obvious where that comes from -- striking characters, fast-paced editing, anecdotal storytelling, memorable dialogue, and excessive violence. An original and amusing film.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Steven Murphy (Collin Farrell) has a secret: he sometimes gets together with a teenage boy, who will wind up placing Steven in an impossible moral dilemma. Tragedy looms at a steady pace in this tale with mythical overtones. The king of strange, Yorgos Lanthimos (known for this film), continues his Anglo-Saxon adventure with this movie, hard-hitting in its approach to violence and surgical in its artistic conception.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer won the José Luis Guarner Critics Award at the Sitges Film Festival 2017.

The Book of Birdie

Birdie is a fragile teenager with an overactive imagination and a fascination with blood. When she moves to an isolated convent, she starts seeing dead nuns. Birdie sets off on a spiritual quest to discover if the source of her visions is something saintly or a dark heresy.

Fun fact: This gorgeous film with an exclusively female cast was filmed at Kemper Center, a notoriously haunted building on the edge of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin.

Hounds of Love

Perth, 1987. One evening, Vicki argues with her mother and sneaks out of the window to go to a party. On her way, she crosses paths with John and Evelyn, a seemingly friendly couple who will end up kidnapping her. One of the season’s most uncomfortable cinematic experiences has been stirring emotions since its screening in Venice.

A Day (Ha-Roo)

Jun-young sees an accident on the highway in which one of the victims is his daughter. From that moment on, the scene repeats itself, like a loop. With the help of a paramedic who lost his wife, Jun-young will try to overcome the inevitable to save his daughter.

To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story

To Hell and Back is the real account of Kane Hodder, the stuntman and stunt coordinator who, after an unhappy childhood and a series of setbacks and accidents, became famous for playing the horror characters Jason Voorhees and Victor Crowley. A story of a fighter who never gave up and finally saw his dreams come true.

Are you going to the Razor Reel Fantastic Film Festival this year? Which of these movies are you looking forward to seeing?