The Treatment

"The Treatment" is an unsettling Belgian murder mystery that gets under your skin and stays there. A nail-biting suspense yarn based on a series of best-selling novels by British crime writer Mo Hayder, the film is not an old-fashioned Agatha Christie-type whodunit, but its gritty themes of sexual violence and pedophilia give it a raw, contemporary intensity that places it in the same company as the "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" book and film series. Police inspector Nick Cafmeyer is investigating a case where a mother and father have been bound and beaten, and their young son is missing. An obsessive loner, Cafmeyer discovers that there are other similar cases, tragedies where the parents were forced by a psychopath to harm their own children who then vanish. For the inspector, this triggers memories of his own brother's abduction as a child, and the possibility that he may still be alive somewhere. Grim and wholly engrossing, "Treatment" is a thriller with an edge.