Arriving on blu-ray from Cult Epics is the stylized mind-bending Dutch thriller AmnesiA which netted dual lead actor Fedja van Huêt the Golden Calf Award for best actor. Hop in the car and let’s go face your demons!

Van Huêt plays a photographer named Alex who returns to his family’s home after he finds out from his shady brother Aram (also played by Van Huêt) that his mother may be dying . Along for the ride is the Sandra (played by Game of Thrones actress Carice van Houten in her theatrical feature film debut), a girl who suddenly appears in the back seat of his car and whose motives are as mysterious as her desires are fiery. What kinds of buried family secrets will come bubbling to the surface when Alex returns to AmnesiA, his family estate? Also included here are Koolhoven’s early TV films Suzy Q and Dark Light. Suzy Q also stars Carice van Houten as a girl coming of age in the 1960s in a hip but shallow pop art world of duplicitous friends, eccentric family and a dalliance with Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull. Dark Light is a claustrophobic thriller about a thief who makes the mistake of being caught ransacking the property of a boil-infested religious zealot who believes that his presence has some kind of higher purpose. As such she keeps him prisoner awaiting a sign from God.

I had no expectation whatsoever going into AmnesiA but found the film engaging almost from the get-go. It immediately conjures a similar atmosphere to David Lynch, particularly Lost Highway with its shadowy night driving, dark secrets of suppressed memory and shifting character traits. Not surprisingly in the extras, Koolhoven mentions Lynch’s influence as well as Polanski’s Cul-de-sac which I can certainly see as well. AmnesiA has a dark sense of humor at times that keeps it from tottering over into pretentiousness. Van Huêt really is great in the dual leads and van Houten is also very good as the cool and enigmatic Sandra. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot because part of the pleasure of this film is watching it unfold. I will say that Koolhoven’s direction is very nice with saturated colors and off-kilter camera angles, intentionally leaving the viewer without a solid footing. Koolhoven uses the same directorial style in service of a very different kind of film with Suzy Q. Koolhoven’s rich color scheme paints Suzy’s world with an overflowing vibrancy that’s quite well done for a film on a television budget. It goes without saying but van Houten is perfect in the role of Suzy, navigating that tricky world of burgeoning adulthood while still retaining the waif-like naïveté of a child. It’s a very good coming-of-age film that is deserving of being seen more. Even Dark Light is a nice little two-person, single location film, a kind of battle of wits and wills. Visually the film is much more drab than AmnesiA or Suzy Q, but it’s also the kind of film that doesn’t really warrant a vibrant color palette. It’s a fairly simple set-up and execution but the actors pull it off convincingly.

AmnesiA is has been remastered recently in 4K from the original negative and looks really good. While there are a few instances of debris and scratches on the transfer, on the whole, it does a great job of showing off Koolhoven’s sleek camerawork. Despite being a TV movie, Suzy Q also looks very good, at times almost as good as AmnesiA albeit a little softer overall. While Dark Light is the weakest transfer of the three, it still looks solid, particularly given it’s TV roots and what I assume was a very low budget. AmnesiA is presented with three audio tracks, an LPCM 2.0 track, a DTS-HD MA 5.1 track and a Dolby Digital 5.1 track. I watched it with the 2.0 track and it sounded very nice. I can imagine the other tracks being well done as well.

This disc has several great extras, particularly if you get the limited edition version that includes the two additional TV movies. First there’s a commentary with director Koolhoven and Van Huêt. It’s a bit of a mix of a lot of good information on the film with occasional rambling and just describing what’s happening. But the moderation from Peter Verstraten does help keep things on track. We also get a 44 minute interview with Carice van Houten and Koolhoven talking about their history with one another and the films they worked on together (4 of them in total). There’s also a behind-the-scenes “Making of Amnesia” featurette a little over 30 minutes that also provides some useful info on the film. Finally there’s a very short featurette with a brief but amusing interview with van Houten. Overall, while the extras do have some overlap with one another, they’re also quality extras worth checking out.

Overall this is a great disc with some great, under-appreciated Dutch films well worth diving into.