Azrael
Azrael
There’s not much horror that can scare the viewers in E.L. Katz’s tepid horror thriller “Azrael.” Just like that, we are thrown into a forest where a boy and a girl appear to be in love and at times annoying to each other. However, something seems amiss in their reality. Stealth and utter stillness are paramount to safety as there is an active threat that feeds on commotion and movement.
Their perfect happiness living in the countryside is short-lived as other people grab them and take them away for god-knows Why. They also cannot talk. As the terrors start to encompass everyone on all fronts, Azrael Samara Weaving has no choice but to take matters into her own hands and fight to stay alive.
Weaving, who came out with the terrific Ready or Not, takes cover in the so much used, “everyone against me” motif and has to fight her way back. The problem of writer and co-producer Simon Barrett is that the story does not offer much material to act with aside of fear and struggle. It is one chase sequence after another with a few clues of context stuck in so that the narrative doesn’t fall apart but definitely doesn’t come close to elucidating everything.
Unlike Azrael, her partner Kenon (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) could be well expressed in other words as lazy emotional bait and is used out of the frame as if an after thought.
The Azrael who our fantasy film suggests vach letu koshek (twinkling eye) is not the only religion that is incorporated into the movie as there are other places in the camp with the Mary type institution of marriage who has a second banana officer by the name of Miriam Vic Carmen Sonne and a Josefine Katariina Unt.
The walls have rough sketches and candlesticks, but the primary aim appears to be ensuring and reinforcing of the cult rather than the love of frosty Cheney. She is the only one whose body is entirely enveloped by a white sheet; all others have clothes that are blackish green dirty with the earth of the forest, thus increasing her ego in her little kingdom.
Why she and Josefine are so hell bent on offering Azrael to the monsters is still confounding. Thanks to the education system: Will it be a sacrifice by an innocent girl? Or does Azrael pose a threat to Miriam the nature of which only she understands? These are just some of the puzzles that remain unsolved.
This film has its roots in the horror world, not being afraid of using classic clichés, such as intertitles that come up on a screen like in titles of Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ Nobody likes terrifying the audience but it can also be very even effective in how pain takes her iron-facades. It is quite evident that the said film does not lack how visions and all are silent.
Although Katz is competent, maintaining that level of suspense proves to be complicated and there is much frustration due to a complete absence of worries in the form of dialogue or any other interaction. Caught by cinematographer Mart Taniel, some of the shots seem like an enchanting relief such as the one where light pours into the forest from above the leaves and the only source of illumination inside is the car swamping the trees in effective yet oppressive darkness, but the relief does not lasts long.
Other moments seem rather straightforward, shot in such a way that the viewer does not get an adrenaline rush particularly handsome shots and only feels awe when seeing the monstrous entities in the film devouring hapless people who crossed their paths.
Speaking of those monsters, the demonic apparitions resemble corpses emerging from the pit with their skin burnt off forming enormous black blisters enveloping raw swelling muscles and exposed veins. Scary they are not to the audience, butt gore is the mhst everything in front does not make any since which ithese things remains clear only because the plot requires them to be this way.
Arriving at the encampment, Azrael apparently discovers a disconcerting affect after her partner makes a fire while at the same time the striking location is unaffected by the fear of using fires.
Of course, they are flimsy barricades but doesn’t it seem like inviting trouble to bring these creatures? The shapes meander in what appears to be their semi perfected way of aping a zombie right into their target, swaying clumsily, to lurch towards their uniform. Nevertheless, they seem to have this ability of switching to curiosity when they spot a moving target.
They smell and follow blood and exciting sounds but as in the case of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, we learn that these beings cannot see someone who is inactive, however on some occasions they can. The contests that procrastinate the round out there is the dilemma in a bad sense ‘not in a good way’.
Primarily, “Azrael” simply fails to deliver any frantic energy or chills that could freeze the audience-scary consequently one fails to be frightened. It is – the stage of this story is abnormal but makes no sense – trying to combine the-religion-and-horror scaring the audience tactic. It does however convey a sense of foreboding such as would be expected of a shoddy haunted house.
Slide changes do not serve to link where you are with any current event nor do they serve to envelop you for most of the movie. Rather reconstruct the script, which for most people is probably more tedious than fun. This riff on ‘A Quiet Place’ does not make any effort to be differentiated and gives nothing new to the audience to help scare them out of whatever restraint they had about the film.
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- Genre: Action, horror
- Country: United States
- Director: E.L. Katz
- Cast: Vic Carmen Sonne, Samara Weaving, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett
