This movie is quite the thing. A horror movie set in Tehran during the height of the Iran-Iraq war, leaving space for hostile spirits and ballistic missile-based scares alike, put together by an Iranian emigree director in the UK, shot in Jordan, starring Farsi-speaking talent from all over the world.
It starts with a gut-punch: Shideh (Narges Rashidi,) a young woman all but begging to be let back into university so she can continue her career, is denied the right due to her past as a political activist by the administration and dressed down for even daring to ask for it. When she makes it back home, her husband (Bobby Naderi) says "Maybe it's for the best..." and gets angry when Shideh is upset as a result and gives her an emotionally brutal talking to. Oof.
Shideh resumes her home life, which mostly consists of taking care of her young child Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) and exercising to Jane Fonda workout videos. When Dorsa's favorite doll disappears, the child blames it on evil spirits -djinn, but not the cuddly ones that look like Idris Elba- as per the stories a creepy playmate has been feeding her. Shideh remains sceptical for a while, but at some point shit will, as they say, get real.
It's a true slow-burn horror movie, but the tension is there from the beginning because society itself is basically hostile to someone like Shideh... or anyone who owns a Betamax, really. She can't even be open about her scepticism: when she confides to a neighbour and laughs off the idea of evil spirits, her neighbour sternly reminds her that djinn are mentioned in the Quran. It shares a lot of DNA with The Babadook -Shideh's deteriorating frame of mind affects her relationship with her daughter in a familiar way- but most of the stress is external this time.
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| Shideh, under the shadow. |
By the film's midpoint an inert missile strikes the building, scaring the residents (one of them to literal death). The image of the missile just hanging there is striking, and a fairly obvious tip of the hat to Guillermo del Toro; From there Shideh's neighbours start fleeing for the countryside, and the ghostly attacks against her daughter get more frequent and overt.
Varied and imaginative horrors do eventually come, culminating in a final gauntlet of low-budget but cool-looking supernatural goings on (I was reminded of Poltergeist while watching it, and was amused to read later in an interview with the director that it was a definite influence!)
For such a small production, it's beautifully shot and staged, with a couple of great performances at its heart and a brilliant control of tone. And the script is clever: the symbolism may be a little on the nose, but well chosen and relevant to the story (besides the missile, the titular shadow is the one cast by the tape X's put to prevent glass shattering from nearby explosions, and there's also the matter of the form chosen by the spirit.)
It's just a good story. A bit too slow sometimes, and some of its elements may be a little overtly familiar (which, turns out, is a bit unfair: The Babadook came out during its production) but the cultural specificity, and its integration with the film's psychological tightening of the screws, gives it a lot of power.
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