Directed By E.L Katz

Starring – Samara Weaving, Vic Carmen Sonne, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett

The Plot – In a world in which no one speaks a devout female-led community hunts down a young woman (Weaving) who has escaped her imprisonment. Recaptured by its ruthless leaders, Azrael is due to be sacrificed to pacify an ancient evil deep within the surrounding wilderness, but she’ll stop at nothing to ensure her own survival. Azrael makes a savage bid for freedom as her escape accelerates towards a vicious, revenge-fueled showdown.

Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore.

Azrael – Official Trailer | HD | IFC Films (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

I’ve always said that going in blind to a movie offers you the most untouched and abstract experience, but in also going in deaf, ‘Azrael’ constructs a tensely taut and stimulatingly sensory experience that preserves entertainment value at its most stripped down and simplistic form. Heading into the film, I had no idea that the film lacked dialogue, so Katz’s need to make the visuals pop all the more impactfully comes as a necessity to the film’s integrity, and thankfully he obliges with brutal gore of the finest practical effects that the imagination can muster, but also as a maintained urgency and vulnerability factor in the direction of the storytelling, which values every ounce of its 76 minute run time. This is a film that practically flew effortlessly in the depths of a story where the conflict and action are continuously ratcheted towards eleven, with little downtime in the moments away from the physicality of the conflict, which are instead spent fleshing out this very hopelessly bleak and terrifying world with impeccable production values. For my money, the sound design is the star here, vividly articulating not only the isolation factor of the desolate setting within the woods, but also a tenderness among vulnerability that uses it as a weapon in the same way something like ‘A Quiet Place’ has done in three movies, where these beastly creatures that go bump in the night are purely attracted by the sounds made by our human characters. The production does a remarkable job in amplifying the smallest stick crunched to feel catastrophic to those nearby, and while this similarity does feel a little too close to that franchise to reap the benefits of feeling entirely original, it’s definitely used here in ways that fully take advantage of the aforementioned R-rating, with buckets of blood and encapsulating claustrophobia that accentuates the overwhelming anxiety permeating from these characters held in helpless captivity. As for the story, the film does leave a lot to be desired, which I will chronicle in a second, but the right side of its intentions are spent fleshing out this bleak and disparaging situation inside of everyday cult life that, despite exaggerations as an off-the-wall horror film, do feel truthfully authentic to the toxicity encapsulated, where the poorly misguided often take advantage of the weak, all in order to feed their own ulterior motives. One such twist inside the film, while flawed in its own integrity, cements this feeling, as religion feeling like the only thing in this afterlife of a wasteland that gives these people meaning, but if you’re caught opposing those ideals, you’re cast out at the first sign of dissention to fight on your own. It truly outlines the dangerousness and ferocity of the human will when society’s walls come crumbling down, but beyond that showcases once more that humans and specifically cults are the most horrifying entity that life can surmise, especially considering these are antagonists that live among us, far from watchful eyes. In addition, Katz, a Fangoria journalist turned director, certainly doesn’t feel like a visionary who values style over substance, but his presentation here subtly conveys atmospheric dread in ways that materialize from some overhead shots that study and score the psychology of the conflict in balance, and while it’s clear that he’s working with a minimalized budget in the air of this independent horror film, his visuals are essentially the hook to audience investment that continuously kept me intrigued and peaked with anticipation, making the most of what minimally could’ve condemned his production, but instead accentuated it breathlessly in this ambiguous atmosphere where anything seemed possible. I also have to talk about the performances, specifically Samara Weaving, who without the aide of accommodating dialogue puts on an acting clinic involving facial registries that garners empathy towards her character, despite very little time and effort being spent fleshing out her character’s backstory. Weaving’s have highly expressive facial features, so Samara’s dependency on them here measures fear and overwhelming circumstances in ways that translates seamlessly to the audience interpreting them from beyond, and through the extent of an evolution that comes on the back of many terrifying and blood-curdling conflicts in both sides of her opposition, she matures and materializes into another badass heroine role similar to her work in ‘Ready or Not’, that puts her on the forefront of this generation’s scream queens, only this time without the benefit of actually screaming to sell her various dimensions as a captivating actress.

NEGATIVES

While the visuals of the movie do enough to capture and faithfully maintain your attention, I can’t help but feel some longing for increased storytelling, in order to contextualize some of the visuals that I was left to interpret on my own. This isn’t a problem if the material is grounded in reality inside of a slice of life narrative, but ‘Azrael’ is bonkers inside of the boundaries of a cult horror film, and one that didn’t always effortlessly sell the motivations of its primary protagonist, as a result relying far too heavily on these compartmentalized chapters of the story, which are divided with religious on-screen text that mirrors the actions and limitations of its characters. It’s a bit refreshing to experience a film that doesn’t use exposition as heavy-handedly as some films tend to do, but an almost complete absence of it here makes the film feel too abstract, which will scare away a mainstream audience from a lack of patience that the film requires, at least during the opening act of the movie. On top of a lack of storytelling, one twist midway through the film also didn’t work for me, as its answering of some questions painted many more that were ultimately left unanswered, leaving me wishing that the film instead persevered as the story it’s initially constructed as, instead of the one with a few too many distracting plot holes to maintain my investment. That’s not to say that ‘Azrael’ didn’t entertain until its closing shot, as the film continuously tickled the horror hound within me that appreciates such daring new visions, it’s just that it offers Azrael the character an out in convenience that I feel wiped away some of the hopelessness of her devastating situation, in turn forcing some aspects of the story to not exactly line up seamlessly, while putting to rest some of the temporary issues that I had with character capabilities that could easily be spoiled if I dive any deeper. Finally, while I appreciated a 76 minute film that never overstayed its welcome, I definitely could’ve used an extra 10 minutes to flesh out the cult antagonists away from Azrael, who are as bland and uninteresting as any movie pertaining to cults could summon since 1976. A lack of dialogue certainly makes it difficult to vividly paint the dynamics and intentions of this group, but I wish the visuals reached for more of the humanity within the camp, instead of opting for one-dimensionality as a collective effort. Doing so would’ve depicted a tragedy of few who are forced to follow, all the while fed into a dynamic between two female leaders inside of the camp, which plays such a prominent role in driving its future aspirations.

OVERALL
‘Azrael’ sacrifices context as a means of stimulating storytelling, but never fails to entertain, with a wordless Weaving continuously evading a blood-thirsty cult, inside of Katz’s post-apocalyptic thrill ride that never relents. Despite some familiarities to ‘A Quiet Place’, the film finds a voice of its own by doubling down on well-crafted practical effects and buckets of blood, that earn every inch of its R-rating, all the while serving as a cautionary tale for blind biblical ideals that rest in the wrong hands.

My Grade: 7/10 or B