Fire, Walk With Me

ALLELUIA (B+) - This gritty horror film owes a debt to the early work of Abel Ferarra (down to the retro graphics), but it's also as stylized as an Adrian Lyne thriller.

The nod here goes to cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, whose resume is filled with foreign shorts. He works here with a fellow Belgian, writer/director Fabrice Du Welz, in spinning a disturbing tale of a woman who, victimized by a menacing con man, joins him for a series of sinister scams.

We're spooked right off the bat with the opening scene showing Gloria (Lola Duenas) sponging down a corpse as part of her job in a morgue. Next, she is being hounded by a friend to accept a date with an online suitor. The single mother relents, and she meets ruggedly handsome Michel (Laurent Lucas from TV's "The Returned"), who preps for the date by running through a creepy warlockian ceremony.

They hit it off. He spends the night. He gets her to lend him money because of an alleged business snafu (he claims to be in the shoe business). When he ignores her subsequent phone calls, she tracks him down at a slick nightclub, spotting him surrounded by women. She draws him back in, and she eventually convinces her to form a partnership. She dumps her daughter on her friend and hits the road with her new beau.

Gloria poses as Michel's sister, as he weds a well-off widow. But Gloria can't contain her intense jealousy, and she violently attacks the bride while the old broad is performing a sex act in the cellar. Drawing blood deepens the bond between Gloria and Michel. Soon they are chatting about marriage and performing ritualistic dances around a fire pit. Their connection is primal.

Subsequent scams include the deaconess of a church/charity and, finally, a single mother, Solange (Helena Noguerra), who works a rural estate with her own young daughter. That ratchets up Gloria's psychological breakdown, as she's reminded of the abandonment of her own daughter.

The story and execution is nothing Guillermo del Toro couldn't do in his sleep. Duenas, a Spaniard, plays the needy plain-jane role smartly. But what keeps you riveted are the stunning visuals. In scene after scene, Du Welz and Dacosse conjure up imaginative set pieces, provocative camera angles, unique close-ups that play with focus and depth of field.

One brutal attack takes place in the extreme foreground, at floor level, backgrounded by a bright, knocked-over lamp that glares into the camera lens. That segues into another low-level shot of bare feet parading through puddles of blood. It's both shocking and mesmerizing.

We are not fans of pulp violence. But we couldn't take our eyes off this one.