what’s that A quiet place In the making? The alien-invasion horror hit that used silence to heighten the tension in its rural setting was brilliantly executed. Because the movie’s ravens chase extraterrestrial sounds, the characters don’t speak out loud, and their audience feels pressured not to scream either. A quiet placeSuccess with critics and audiences not only prompted sequels (A Quiet Place Part II) and the prequel (A Quiet Place: Day One), but also opportunistic imitators, eager to adopt a revolutionary tactic to make their unrelated movies stand out.
Last fall, writer/director Brian Duffield hit Hulu with a surprisingly similar concept No one will save you, which stars Caitlin Dever as a country girl who is invaded by aliens while she doesn’t say a word. A Christmas cam with John Woo’s most disappointing action quiet night, In which Joel Kinnaman plays a revenge-fueled anti-hero who, due to an act of violence, is unable to raise a voice — but for some apparent reason, neither does anyone else around him. now comes Azrael, A horror collaboration from Cheap thrills Director EL Katz and you are ahead Author Simon Barrett. Despite the considerable talent attached, It also leans hard into this scream-free gimmick that can’t make up for its flimsy storytelling.
what’s that Azrael About?
Written by Barrett and directed by Katz, Azrael Stars as a young woman named Samara Weaving, who is not only named after the Angel of Death, but is also part of a post-apocalyptic cult that lives deep in the woods under a vow of silence. Blood-red text splashes across the screen to succinctly represent the cult’s big rule: Don’t speak; Or evil will come.
In a rugged village, Cultists worship the wind that rips through their drafty churches adorned with crucifixes. They communicate with each other through stern glances and huffs of air. Apart from their ritual of human sacrifice it seems to be a relatively peaceful place. Silence or not, creatures like ghouls need something to feed on that roam the forests in search of human blood.
Chosen by her community to feed ghosts that look like Nosferatu, Azrael is tied to a chair, where she is left like a poor goat. Jurassic Park – Food to be tied and enjoyed alive. But this clever girl breaks her way, not only haunting her treacherous community but also hunting it down so she can survive. It’s a story full of graphic violence that’s best described as gloopy, but the plot is pretty thin: Survive.
Azrael Feels like a short film stretched beyond its limits.
Barrett and Katz have stories with the horror anthology franchise The ABCs of Death And V/H/S, Which brings together a collection of quirky shorts with some delicate throughline or framing device. Azrael It seems that it started as a short pitch that was not developed to its full potential before being released to the world.
Part of the problem is that the plot line is thinner than Weaving’s well-groomed eyebrows. Despite plopping in a boyfriend (The chocolate one(Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) to try to save Azrael, a camp leader who has serious glover powers (Katrina Unt), and a hapless bystander horrified by his plight, the story is nothing short of remarkable. What happened in the world, what the creatures are in the forest or how the cult came about are all largely irrelevant. And frankly, that’s fine. Those details don’t matter to Azrael because she’s just trying to get through the night, so they don’t matter to her audience. But there’s something crucially lacking here: character.
Because Azrael has no dialogue, her actions become her primary character definition. And that leaves us with very little. She likes to kiss her boyfriend. She made him a bracelet out of twigs. And she doesn’t want to be eaten alive by forest vampires. It’s relevant, but not much to invest in. Azrael is a nod to the Final Girl archetype — sweet and resilient, but without any depth to bring her to life.
Basically, Barrett and Katz assume that the audience might want to understand the heroine they follow through a night of mayhem and murder. Or maybe they thought of casting the weave A lazy scripted hero will carry with it enough audience wishes to paper over. After all, fans of the genre delivered every wicked smile, snarky rejoinder, and curse-filled weave. The Babysitter, Guns AkimboAnd Are you ready or not?. goal Azrael This is not like the movies.
This silent premise robbed audiences of Weaving’s sharp comedic timing and his undeniable charm as a foul-mouthed badass. It’s not all playful plotlines and ultra-violent skirmishes. It is a grim and grim religious pilgrimage full of joy but no fun.
The silent game is suffocating Azrael.
in in a quiet place, The family could not safely raise their voice, but they communicated with each other through sign language. This gave the actors not only their character’s ideas, but also a grounded world in which to create supernatural scares. in Azrael, the cult theatrically shouts or smiles or sighs heavily to get their points across. The result is an almost comical pantomime, which reads like a crude reenactment of a silent film performance. All the performances here rely on terrified faces, furrowed brows or silent screams. It’s more obscure and goofy than impressive or terrifying.
Perhaps Katz was striving for an atmosphere that felt far from the familiar, vibrating instead with raw emotion, heady atmosphere and terror. But with no dialogue or any defined characters to stick to, plus an episodic structure blatantly designed in favor of story-sloping murders, this religious horror flick sounds terrifying but humdrum. Not enough for audiences to sink their teeth into. When bloodied and scratched with religious symbols, Azrael Plays like an empty parlor trick – not even a cheap thrill.
Azrael Reviewed from SXSW 2024.
