Under the Shadow (2016)

A quick search for the "best horror movies on Netflix" yields many of the same results. There are quite a few movies that come up again and again that I have seen already. Some number of those movies are on my October playlist. But there was one film that I hadn't seen. Hell, I hadn't even heard of it until I saw it popping up on list after list.

Under the Shadow (2016) is a film written and directed by Iranian-born Babak Anvari. It was an international production between Qatar, Jordan and the United Kingdom. The film is renowned for its shoe-string budget thrills, and masterful sense of dread. And, at 84 minutes, I could hardly pass up the opportunity to add some quick international flavor to my October playlist.

So I fired up Netflix, grabbed my movie journal, and settled in.

Summary:

It is the 1980s, and Tehran is in the midst of war. A mother (Narges Rashidi) and her daughter (Avin Manshadi) are trying to go about their lives. But, after a missile comes crashing through their apartment building, the neighbors start fleeing the city in droves. Soon, they are the only tenants left in the building. But they are not alone. Something dark, and ancient has stayed with them.

Pros:

A Time of Real Tension: It was a clever bit of storytelling to set the action of this movie in war-torn Iran. The djinn, the movie's monster, supposedly feed on paranoia and distress. It would be hard to imagine a time more appropriate to be haunted by a djinn. Shideh, the mother, is young enough to have experience life in Iran before the Cultural Revolution. She remembers what it was like to go to medical school, and to wear whatever clothes she wanted. Now she is left in a country that she barely recognizes. One that has demonized her dream of an education. With her husband out of the house on the war front (as an army doctor, no less) she is left to take care of her daughter alone. Anvari mines the setting for some genuine heart ache (Shideh quietly crying in the car on the way home from being kicked out of the university) and real terror (the tenants retreating to the basement amid blaring bomb klaxons). As the film goes on, however, the horror becomes inescapably supernatural. Shideh's worldly disbelief gives way to primal terror. It is a fine balance to toe, but Anvari walks it deftly.

Genuine Scares: Sometimes, horror on a shoestring makes for better scares than multi-million dollar Hollywood creature features. Anvari crafts some real scares using simple cinematic techniques: the wind blowing through curtains; a figure, just out of sight, disappearing into another room; the quiet creaking of a war-torn building. When the film DOES use its CGI, it does so to masterful effect: Shideh goes under the bed to save her daughter, only to discover that the djinn is there, dressed in her daughter's blue coat. The hood of the coat is filled with a gaping, chomping mouth that tries to eat Shideh. That's one of the most unique things I've seen in a long time. Perhaps because he doesn't have the budget to do so, Anvari builds a slow-burn thriller that rarely shows the real nature of its monster, and relies on atmosphere, and the talents of his leads in lieu of blood splatter and creature effects. Not knowing is often more effective than any digital or workshop effect.

Political Terror: There are small touches that make Tehran a scary place even before a supernatural demon of the air arrives on the scene. In the scene where Shideh gets kicked out of university, there is a window that shows the city skyline. During their dialogue, a bomb explodes in the distance, and they barely react to it. War has become their reality. When she returns home, she rips of her headscarf, and spends a majority of her time in fairly risque clothing (work out clothes). This backfires on her when she flees her apartment, daughter in her arms, and is apprehended by some shadowy policeman. She is arrested for being uncovered in public. A repairman comes to the apartment to fix the broken windows, and Shideh scrambles to cover herself up, hide the VCR and tuck away all of the VHS tapes: these are illegal things. What we get is a real sense of danger for Shideh. It's a terrible place, that's about to get even more terrifying.

Quickly Paced: The film is a slow burn, and it feels like a kettle slowly coming to boil. You'd be surprised to know that the film clocks in at just 84 minutes. It utilizes its screen time for maximum effect, and feels like just the right amount of movie.

Cons:

The Overdub: This is probably more a problem with Netflix than anything else, but the overdub for this one was bad. I would have preferred to read subtitles. I know that not everyone does, but I thought that Rashidi's performance loses something when her lines are overdubbed. She crafts a wonderful performance that is kneecapped by the sometimes lackadaisical line readings of whoever did the afternoon's worth of overdub work. That's robbery, right there.

In Conclusion:

I enjoyed this movie. It took me away from many of the standard elements of the horror genre while also honoring them. It's set in a different place and time entirely: a beautiful 80s period piece that has a different feel than America's current nostalgia-fueled obsession. We get a djinn, which is a breath of supernatural fresh air: I'm sick to fucking death of zombies and vampires and hackneyed ghosts. With Under the Shadow, Babak Anvari has stormed onto the field with a lean, original piece of horror that has me excited to see what he does next.

Should You Watch It?

Yeah, give it a whirl. It's streaming on Netflix.

Miscellany:

- Currently sports a 99% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 78 reviews).
- Babak Anvari's feature directorial debut.
- While set in Iran, it was actually shot in Jordan.
- It was selected as the British submission for Best Foreign Language Film for the 89th Annual Academy Awards, but was ultimately not nominated.