Azrael

 Azrael's the angel of passover, one of the angels of death. At least according to non-mainstream Jewish texts and canonical Muslim lore; Christianism tends to be a little more circumspect about the private lives of angels, and leaves the details to be hashed out by pseudo-occultists, theurgists, and monks with too much time on their hands. And of course, by occultists who, like anime writers, love nothing more than to play around in other people's toyboxes.

 In any case, according to Muslims Azrael's got an unhealthy amount of faces and wings coming out of a body made up of millions of eyes and tongues. I think we can agree that looks nothing like Samara Weaving, who plays a character named Azrael in the eponymous movie I'm going to start discussing now, I promise.

 She's not supposed to be an angel or anything, she's just a young woman called Azrael trying to get by in some post-apocalyptic forest. And the term post-apocalyptic is actually more appropriate her than on, say, Mad Max or whatever: The world Azrael lives in is based on a... creative reading of the bible where the rapture has come and gone, leaving only the sinners behind. No sign of Nic Cage, sadly - but take heart, there's no Kirk Cameron either.

 Azrael and her partner (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) belong to a cult-like tribe of survivors who live in forest compounds and who have all ritually removed their vocal chords to enforce a sort of vow of silence (the scar, in a neat little detail, is cross-shaped). Trying to gain back God's favour after he's turned their back to them, I guess. In any case, Azrael and her friend are on the outs with the group for some unspecified reason, and are living alone in the woods.

 It doesn't take long before the two are captured by agents from the cult and separated. And this is where things nasty: Azrael gets tied to a chair out in a small clearing, one of her captors slices her leg open, and then... they just turn away, making weird noises. Soon the wind rocks the treetops (a recurring device signalling something wicked this way comes) and a withered, charred-looking zombie-like creature stumbles out of the treeline and tries to make a meal out of Azrael. I mean, if these cultists are trying to get god to re-think their left-behind-ness, serving up someone so they can be eaten by a post-hell-sinner doesn't seem to be very virtuous. Which I guess hasn't stopped any Christian ever, but this is a tad extreme.

 Thanks to a lucky break Azrael escapes getting eaten alive (some of her captors don't). That leaves her stranded in a zombie-filled woodland, her lover captured by a bunch of murderous zealots. All right then.

 Azrael is a neat, badass, low-budget action/horror mashup, with the title character vacillating between escaping from and waging a sort of guerrilla war against her erstwhile cultist brethren. And because everyone is forced into their de facto vow of silence, it's basically dialog-free.

 I really love the worldbuilding here, and how the absolute lack of exposition beyond a short opening crawl forces us to fill in the blanks; The script, by Simon Barrett (a regular collaborator of Adam Wingard's) gives us just enough information to work out the basics, but the rest is left tantalizingly up in the air. What set Azrael and her boyfriend against everyone else at the compound? Who's that woman (Katariina Unt) who seems to really have it in for Azrael? What's the deal with the zombies, anyways, and is the devil really flying over the treetops like he's implied to?

 Fuck knows, but it's a fun set of questions to think about. Basically, it's all action and context; There are enough threads to pick up and tie things together, but more importantly, enough is left in the dark to foment a sense of mystery that's pregnant with possibilities. At one point something from the wider world intrudes into the story, reframing the scope of everything that's going on in a pretty cool way. It ends up being an incidental detail, but like everything else in this movie it informs the background churn of associations that you then assemble into a picture of what's going on.

 It's interesting to compare the lack of dialog to another recent non-verbal genre piece, No One Will Save You - there, the silence was pointedly symbolic, whereas here it's more of a... diegetic narrative device, if that makes sense. It doesn't feel like a gimmick, it's just a movie that happens to be about a bunch of nutjobs who mutilated themselves so they couldn't speak. No bullshit, no deeper meaning; It's refreshing. And it makes the world and the lean story more interesting.

 Like all horror hybrids, it's not particularly scary, though its iteration of zombies (Director E.L. Katz would probably throw something at my head for calling them that, but, well, they're basically fast zombies) is an effective threat. It's also somewhat hard to believe that Weaving, what with her tiny frame, has it in her to run through the gauntlet the movie sets before her, but she's excellent as usual and manages to convey a good sense of despair and grit.

 Effects are thin on the ground, mainly some cool practical gore effects when the post-people dig into their chosen food, and the fairly minimalistic orchestral score is a pretty good too. Direction is basic but effective (I guess Katz got all the stylistic flourishes out of his system while directing his Channel Zero season), and the cinematography by Mart Taniel follows suit, though there are some striking shots of sunlight streaming through the eaves.

 The action is decent, things get pretty brutal and it builds up to a nicely fucked-up finale. It's a good one.