Azrael
This is the second non-verbal post-collapse movie of FrightFest, though it takes a more Biblical approach to the apocalyse than the surprisingly similar Year 10. Given that I Will Never Leave You Alone also has a mute protagonist, there must be something in the air – perhaps a reaction to all those shut-up-in-a-house-with-nothing-to-do-but-talk movies which are proliferating at the moment. A second feature from E.L. Katz, whose debut was the buzzy (and chatty) Cheap Thrills, scripted by Simon Barrett, who has often worked with Adam Wingard, Azrael is built around the lean, tough, bloodied, angelic presence of Samara Weaving, continuing her streak of accepting the oddest horror heroine roles on offer.
It’s some years after the Rapture, which presumably means all the truly devout are gone from the Earth, and Azrael (Weaving) – all the ad-pub gives it away, but you don’t find out anyone’s name until the end credits list – is apparently living in the woods with her boyfriend (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), with a cruciform brand on her throat to denote that she has given up ‘the sin of speech’. That also means no one really explains themselves, and throughout the action it’s impossible to determine whether the little community of survivors who persecute Azrael are on the side of the angels or not. We naturally sympathise with the poor woman who is tied to a chair with a cut leg, so her blood can attract skeletal vampire-ghoul-demon-burn-victims (Dan Martin FX) to rip her apart with their mouths, while a circle of good folk turn their backs and literally huff and puff … but the though they are ruthless, the townsfolk have a social structure which suggests the beginnings of civilisation – they care for their ailing old and a pregnant woman in white (Vic Carmen Sonne) is holed up in something like a church with prophecies painted on the wall.
Of this hardscrabble congregation, Josefine (Katariina Unt) emerges as Azrael’s particular nemesis – but most of the film is chase/escape/brutal fight on repeat, with Azrael fending off the nuisance ghouls and embarking on a campaign of revenge which leads to yet more very gruesome events. A bit of subterranean ghoulery after Azrael has been buried alive evokes Henry Kuttner’s classic Weird Tales story ‘The Graveyard Rats’ and the climax is constructed around a foretold nativity much contested in horror cinema at the moment. Shot in an Estonian forest, this offers stripped-down survivalist action – it’s almost an escape/evade/fight back training movie – alongside slightly murkier religious material in the general Left Behind arena.
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